TheExpatJournals.com

This Christmas was easily the most incredible, most memorable ever. About the time Santa started bringing computers, my son began to understand where they came from, so I quit Christmas and we began what we call our anti-Christmas, trading what had become almost as work as moving for a new adventure each year to get as far away from the commercialized American Christmas as possible. Before this, gambling in Atlantic City on Christmas Day was sitting at the top of the success in terms of an anti-Christmas.

San Blas…I now understand why going as a guest is very different from going as a tourist. First of all, I had been warned the seas would be very high because of the winds. But no one warned me what it would be like to take a cayuco so small it was pretty much at water level…kinda scary in open ocean when the swells seem to grow. Even with a motor, I had to bail and bail and bail water during the one hour crossing from the air strip at Porvenir.

No electricity, no running water, all fresh water(aqua dulce) brought in cayucos from the river on the mainland (Del Monte), all cooking done on a wood fire, kitchen tools like in the wilds of Africa - all hand tooled from local woods, colanders and ladles from coconut shells, aqua de pipa or coconut still in, not only the shell, but it’s outer covering and eaten with a spoon, snorkeling on pristine coral reefs beside uninhabited islands on Christmas, watching a guy so good at free dives catch our dinner of crab, lobster, fish and squid, sleeping communally in hammocks….WOW.

Aaron was the one who saw the squid. They are so beautiful swimming around, but he suggested I call the fisherman. So the guy swims over and spears one of the squid and a viscuous black ink cloud covers the area for quite a while. We both felt quite bad about it actually. One of my favorite lines of the trip was later that night. Aaron said, “I’d feel terrible if I had this squid killed and then didn’t eat it.” So he ate it.

Christmas Eve and Christmas night, we went to a neighboring island. It’s like a city, even has some electricity. It has roughly 2,000 Kunas living there with thatched huts built so closely together there were alleys and ‘main’ paths of sand…bizarre…like a maze. Anyway, each year, the guy who runs the museum on that island coordinates Santa to roam through town in full (very hot, especially with gloves included) costume giving candy to all the children. That night, for the first time in the history of Kuna Yala (as far as the museum director knows), they had a white Santa…my son. Aaron is 6′2″ and towered above everyone else on the island. He even entered the village church (non-Christian) during a meeting of congress to present the village chief, as per tradition leading from a hammock, with candy. It wasn’t impromptu as it was absolutely tabu to take any photos of inside the meeting hall let alone go inside as a white person, but rather at the prompting of the museum director. Aaron went inside and I snapped photos. The chief accepted the candy.

It was quite the cultural experience and we sure learned a lot. It was certainly memorable. I’m going to write about the whole experience at length. There were so many little things that come to mind, like the sound of a baby rattle made of calabassa used to soothe a baby to sleep…rhythmic and gentle. I bought such amazing, really, really old molas. All were guarded by the grandmothers so no other families could copy the design. It seemed so wrong to sell family heirlooms, but they wanted to, so I bought them. These are not for use. These are art. And I feel honored to now become their guardian. Already, a Kuna on the Paseo saw one and wanted to copy it. That would be so wrong on a level I get and can’t voice.

When we were away…snorkeling or whatever, my important things..money, passport, etc…were guarded by the 95 year old grandmother who’s legs are bad so she is permanently hammock-ridden. Nobody would dare to take anything she was looking after.

Before that, we had gone to posh Playa Blanca on the Pacific to a friend’s house that has become my favorite getaway because of how pampered you are there, especially the cooking. Next we went to El Valle where the weather was cool enough for a sweater. My friend’s house has a swimming pool fed by thermal springs, so it’s constantly warm, constantly clean, chemical free water. The hotels were shockingly completely empty. Guess it truly is a weekend kind of town.

I do believe this one will remain vividly memorable as long as we’re both alive.