Panama - Guna Yala Islands & the Panama Canal

In the summer of 1998, my spouse and I decided to combine her love for cruising and my love for tropical places and cultures. We flew from Miami to Jamaica with our thirteen year old, now seasoned traveler/daughter and boarded the SS Ocean Breeze, a small cruise ship built in 1954, and sailed south to Panama. We had never been to this part of the Caribbean before and were surprised at how rough the ocean was. We rocked and rolled quite a bit and I missed a few meals to seasickness. However, once we reached the Panamanian coast, the seas calmed and we were treated to rainstorms and magnificent rainbows over turquoise waters.

We offloaded into small motor boats and drove into the heart of the Guna Yala (formerly known as the San Blas Islands) - an autonomous territory of Panama. The indigenous people who live here fled from the mainland during the Spanish conquest and took up life as hunters and fishermen. They have a rich cultural heritage and that is often expressed in the elaborate textiles known as "molas". These textiles are made in a reverse applique style of two to seven layers of cotton. Patterns are geometric or combinations of abstract and illustrative natural subjects such as animals.

After visiting the Guna Yala, we motored west and joined a lineup of commercial cargo ships queud up to enter the Panama Canal. Once we entered the three Gatun Locks, it was fascinating to watch how the water levels were pumped up and down to allow ships to move a total of 85 feet vertically. After we cleared the locks, we docked at the Yacht Club in Gatun Lake for a day of touring the locks, food and music, and swimming in Gatun Lake.

The next day, we returned to the Caribbean Sea via the Gatun Locks and motored east to Cartagena, Colombia for a day tour before sailing back to Jamaica.