Tribe of Many Colors : A boating adventure to Panama’s San Blas Islands, where the Cuna Indians sell their famous appliqued molas to cruise ship passengers-but shrewdly manage to keep their culture a world apart

AN BLAS ISLANDS, Panama — Paradise sometimes picks strange coordinates when descending to earth. Ninety miles east of Colon, a tough port town at the Atlantic entrance to the Panama Canal, lie the pristine islands of the San Blas Archipelago, one of the few places left in the Americas where you can see an indigenous people living in their native lands in a way their ancestors would recognize.

Last July, my friend Emily and I hired a charter boat--a 60-foot, steel-hulled ketch named A Great Escape--for a week’s visit to San Blas. Our captain and mate were Brent Chapman, from Vancouver, and Stefan Zaborowski, who holds a U.S. passport but hasn’t been back to the States in years. I know Stefan from a trip I took with him several years back, when he was the only charter boat captain on Lake Nicaragua. He has sailed all over the world, and so when he told me that he’d never been anywhere like San Blas, I listened. He described a galaxy of nearly 400 coral islands, many uninhabited, with white sand beaches set against a background of bold coastal mountains.

Lying just off the Panamanian mainland in a 100-mile arc stretching east almost to Colombia, the islands are owned and operated by the Cuna Indians, known among other things for their molas , the colorful reverse-applique textiles that are among the most famous handicrafts of Central America. Halfway through his phone call from Panama, after he offers us a good rate to share a charter with another couple, I stop him to say we’re coming.

Emily and I arrive in Panama City exhausted after the inevitable delays one encounters in travel to Latin America. We are met at the international airport by Stefan and Brent, who drive us 60 miles back across the country to the boat’s mooring at the Balboa Yacht Cluboutside Colon. The other couple, it turns out, has canceled and we will have the boat to ourselves.

We decide to break the 90-mile ocean voyage to San Blas into two days, stopping the first night in the historic harbor of Portobelo. Named by Columbus--it means “beautiful port” in Spanish--Portobelo was the principal Spanish Caribbean port in all of Central America from the 16th to 18th centuries. The gold the conqistadors squeezed from Peru came here overland from Panama City in special mule trains. It was guarded in a fort until the annual coming of galleons from Spain to ferry it home. Despite its narrow, heavily fortified entrance, the city was sacked in 1739 by the English under Admiral Edward Vernon.

Thereafter, the Spanish decided to take their loot home the long way, around Cape Horn, and Portobelo was all but abandoned. Today there is a drowsy little town atop the ruins of the old city, where from my admittedly superficial survey the chief industries appear to be the washing and drying of clothes and the perpetual repair of old cars. A ruined customs house and several storehouses are all that’s left of the Colonial era, and vultures seem to have replaced pigeons as the town bird.

Leaving Portobelo the next morning, we head out into the big swells that characterize this part of the Caribbean several months of the year. I use the time to read up on the Cuna. No one knows for sure how long they’ve been living on the Panamanian isthmus, but it’s believed to be at least 3,000 years, the last 500 of which have brought invading Europeans of varying degrees of ruthlessness. There are various theories on how they got to the San Blas Islands (all of which lie within 4 miles offshore), from wanting to get away from mainland mosquitoes to being closer to passing boats for trade purposes.

In a kind of cultural jujitsu that mystifies anthropologists, the Cuna have mastered the art of exploiting the exploiters, or at least minimizing their impact. From what I can glean, the essentials of surviving an onslaught by a technologically superior and greedy race appear to be this: Let a few of them in, so long as they respect our ways. Study them, as they have much to teach us. But don’t let too many in. Don’t let them stay too long. And don’t tell them too much. Above all, don’t marry them.

Perhaps their cultural camouflage is the Cuna’s best defense, for their simple lifestyle belies a considerable sophistication. They live in thatched palm huts with bamboo walls, but the men also routinely leave for a few years to work in the Canal Zone, or to travel to foreign countries to attend college. (They almost invariably return.) They paddle their cayucas --dugout canoes--among the islands to gather coconuts and fish, but they also govern this province with more autonomy than any other indigenous people in the region, and among themselves speak of Panama as a foreign country.

In addition to private boats and charters, a number of cruise ships now stop for a few hours at a time at a couple of the westernmost islands, just long enough for their passengers to buy molas . Other than that, visitors are few, partly because the Cuna have kept the outside world at bay thus far by thwarting the construction of roads to the coastal area. You won’t find glass-bottomed boat tours, jet ski rentals or a Cuna theme park. Despite their ambivalence toward outsiders, they remain friendly to courteous visitors, especially North Americans, who never wreaked quite the level of havoc that the Spanish did.

After eight hours of arrhythmic rising and falling on the sea, we can see in the distance a line of palm trees growing out of the horizon. Brent flicks on the radar. In the green glow of the monitor, we can see the fuzzy shapes of a host of crescent shaped isles: the beginning of the San Blas Islands.

As we close the distance, I see Stefan’s point: This is a Disney-esque tropical paradise minus Hayley Mills and Fred MacMurray. Palm trees nod agreeably from coral islands with white sand beaches. Around each island is a made-for-snorkeling reef where the water turns enough shades of green to drive an interior decorator mad. Charts of the area are notoriously imprecise, and we skirt these islands gingerly as we look for a safe channel into them. There’s a strange pattern to the habitation of these places. Some islands are uninhabited, others have several thatched huts sprinkled across them, still others are so densely packed with huts that I can’t pick out a square meter of unused space.

Like the design of the Cuna molas themselves, the layout of the villages is compact but precise. Each house is a uniform distance from its neighbor; the impression is order, not chaos. With Stefan up the mast, calling out shoals to port and starboard, Brent eases the boat into the lee of an island.

“This is Chichime,” Brent announces. In the diminishing light, the drunken boat has found its bed. It will be smooth sailing from here on; the islands will protect us from the swells. We drop anchor in 50 feet of water between two islands and grill steaks on the boat’s barbecue. Night doesn’t fall in the tropics: It collapses. In 15 minutes the twilight becomes darkness. Exhausted from having done nothing all day except be a passenger on a slowly bucking boat, by 9 o’clock I, too, have collapsed.

The next morning I awake to muffled, musical voices, the swish of a paddle in water, and the wide brown eyes of a little girl peering into the porthole. I stay in bed, trying to think of some cross-cultural thing to say. I opt for “What’s cookin’, good lookin’?” A hand shoots across a laughing mouth and the face vanishes. I decide I’ve said the right thing.

Up top I discover three dugout canoes and 12 people, all women and children except for a single male escort, Julio, who wears a barracuda tooth around his neck and speaks some English.

The Cuna are small people; anybody over 5 feet 2 inches is considered tall. The women are striking. All have short black hair (only young girls wear their hair long) and are dressed in red kerchiefs, blouses with molas sewn on the front and back, and bright print skirts. Their arms and legs are tightly wrapped in colorful beads. Many have a single black line tattooed down their noses, which are pierced by a heavy gold ring.

Some women look you boldly in the face, others shy away, especially when a camera is produced (a condition that can usually be remedied with a coin). It is the women who are the merchants among the Cuna, and they have identified Emily as the shopper in the group. They are all holding up molas for her inspection, shaking them to attract her attention.

No one is quite sure how molas evolved. One theory is that they are the result of the Cuna transferring onto cloth designs they once painted on their bodies. Mola prices range from a few dollars to hundreds for larger, more intricate designs. The ones the Cuna women show us depict themes of Cuna cosmology: paired parrots, sleeping turtles, iguanas climbing trees after flowers. There are also many intricate abstract designs, two cats in bow ties riding atop pigs and one I buy because its ambiguity intrigues me: a flying pelican carrying a basket in its beak with a baby boy in it. The bird is smiling and the scene seems to portend propitious birth. But the child has little horns growing out of his head. Blessing or curse, for 10 bucks it’s mine. Stefan distributes penny candy to the kids, coffee and cigarettes to the adults, and eventually they paddle away.

That afternoon, Stefan and I go out in the inflatable dinghy to fish the reefs around Chichime. That evening we go ashore to Julio’s island to buy some Caribbean king crabs he has offered to sell us, only to find they have escaped from his “fish safe,” a small stockade of palm stakes driven into the sand in about three feet of water. There appear to be about three families living on the island. Even though there is a fair bit of space, everything is arranged as if there weren’t. The two pigs, which Julio tells us are bathed daily, are in small log pens about three feet square. His three cedar canoes are arranged side by side.

The head woman here is small even by Cuna standards, about 4 1/2 feet. She is stout and, trussed up tightly in her mola blouse and skirt, somehow reminds me of a walnut-colored Queen Victoria, even though she has a gold ring through her nose and is smoking a small pipe. When Julio asks us for tobacco for her, we explain that all we have are cigarettes. “Good,” he says, making tearing motions with his fingers. “She take three or four and put them in her pipe.”

As we sail east through the San Blas Islands, we are watched over by the coastal mountains of the same name, the highest of which rises to 2,400 feet. They are an unbroken and slightly forbidding green. There are still jaguars, ocelots and tapirs in this jungle. Rivers, hidden beneath the canopy, plummet down and empty into the sea every few miles. The Cuna own the mountains to the ridge line. The other side belongs to another people, the Choco.

Looking over our charts, we randomly pick a river, Rio Diablo, to explore. As we make our way there one morning, we receive a mariner’s blessing: a trio of porpoises arcing from the clear water just under our bow. This is my first time seeing what for many sailors is a common sight. For me it borders on epiphany. They’re as closely choreographed as a bicycle team, weaving complex patterns, politely sharing the honor of swimming first.

But the good omen quickly fades as we arrive at the mouth of Rio Diablo. A Cuna man, the only pushy one we encounter the whole trip, comes up in his canoe and tells us in good English the river is closed to outsiders, but that he is a guide and can take us up other rivers for a price. Stefan listens politely for several minutes before he tells him, “Thanks, we don’t want your help.” He motions me into the dinghy. “Let’s go check this out with the local head man.”

We motor five minutes over to a nearby village. The island is crammed with huts and every inch of space is used. But all is ordered. The paths are swept, the laundry hung neatly in the tiny yards. A gang of curious children attaches itself to us. We find the local sila , or leader, in what must be the town hall, a palm-thatched lodge big enough to hold a hundred people.

Men are sitting about on benches in the dimness. Talk ceases as we enter. The sila is wearing a felt hat--a mark of status--and eyeglasses. He looks like Dr. Duri, the dentist I went to as a child. He greets us with a polite smile. Pleasantries are exchanged in Spanish. Stefan asks if we may be permitted to make an excursion up the river. We are told calmly that no outsiders are allowed up the Diablo, although we are welcome to visit other rivers nearby. He is neither hostile nor apologetic. No appeal is to be made.

When we return to our boat, Brent says that in talking with other canoes stopping by he has been told that a group of Americans went up the river without permission and filmed a group of Cuna women who were doing wash and bathing. There are strong taboos against any public nakedness among the Cuna. That outsiders would presume to come film them that way is, in their eyes, far beyond rudeness. It borders on assault. Hence the closing of Rio Diablo.

Brent and Stefan decide on another river, the Mandinga, a few miles west. We sail over and finally locate the opening in the mangroves. The four of us pile carefully into the dinghy and start up its little outboard. Three hundred yards from the sea, we have been swallowed whole by the forest. Palm fronds 40 feet long meet over our heads. It’s gloomy and there are leaves big enough to wrap a body in. It’s like a Rousseau painting, only denser. Vines as large in diameter as trees gird trees as thick as rich men’s monuments. There are places along the edge where rough trails disappear into the jungle. These are probably where the Cuna take their canoes out to farm yucca, plantains, bananas and rice on farms that (so the guidebooks say) blend into the forest so well we wouldn’t notice them. Though there are machete marks where branches blocking the river have been cut, we encounter no one. After only 10 minutes, the water becomes swifter, colder and skim-milk cloudy. We kill the motor to pull our way over submerged timber or under fallen trees.

In an eddy below a logjam, I spot two eyes floating serenely in the water. As I shout, “Look!” they slide beneath the murky water. Brent asks how far apart the eyes were. “I don’t kow,” I tell him. “Maybe three, four inches.”

“A lot of times all you ever see are the eyes,” he says. “The rule of thumb is one foot of reptile for every inch between the eyes.”

I hear Emily suck in her breath. After what seems like a long time but is only half an hour, we hit a big logjam we can’t get through. We all pretend to be disappointed.

The next morning, our last in the islands, I again wake to soft voices. There are three mola -laden canoes are alongside our boat. Another one, rigged with two crude sails and carrying three boys, whizzes by, the Cuna version of motorcycle.

As always, each woman has three or four children, some of them less than 2 years old, in her cayuca . In what is apparently a minor breach of mola -dickering etiquette, I display too much interest in a piece without offering to buy it. I am mostly interested because it is so strange: two penguins in spectacles dancing on the sea. The owner is pointing at me and speaking rapidly. “She’s cursing you,” Stefan explains helpfully. I point back and shake my finger as if I am equally angry. “Attention K Mart shoppers,” I announce. “No more molas !” It works. She breaks into a smile, then resumes cursing me. Only now we both know it’s mock cursing. I feel like I’ve made a friend and by the time she is gone, I wish I had bought the mola .

An hour later, we hoist anchor and depart. Stefan climbs 30 feet up the mast and yells instructions back to Brent at the helm to keep us off the reefs as we make our way back to deep water. There are several canoes passing near us on their way to the river. Suddenly two jets roar overhead, not 500 feet off the deck. “F-16’s out of Howard,” says Stefan, referring to the U.S Air Force base near Panama City, where only three years ago Manuel Noriega was ousted after the U.S. invasion. It’s an unsettling sight, aboriginal dugouts and radar-evading fighters. But it doesn’t much faze the Cuna. They don’t even look up.

GUIDEBOOK

Sailing to the San Blas Islands

Getting there: American (via Miami), United (via Miami), Continental (via Houston) and LACSA (via San Juan, Costa Rica) airlines offer service to Panama City from Los Angeles. All are currently offering a special round-trip fare of $625 if tickets are purchased before Oct. 31.

Booking a sailboat: A Great Escape, a comfortable 60-foot ketch with two cabins with double beds, accommodates up to six people and costs $900 per day, including all meals, beer and soft drinks and snorkeling gear. Bookings may be made through Ivonne Gonzalez at MIA Travel in Panama City; telephone 011-507-63-80-44, 63-78-35 or 63-79-87, fax 011-507-63-80-78. The crew will meet guests at Panama City’s international airport and drive them to pick up the boat on the other side of the isthmus outside Colon, as we did. Two different options are to take the boat from Panama City and pass through the Panama Canal (which takes one day), or meet the boat in the San Blas Islands. For the latter, you can catch a commuter flight from Paitilla Airport in Panama City to Porvenir, one of the islands, on Ansa (local tel. 26-09-32) or Aerotaxi (local tel. 64-86-44) for about $25 each way. Flights depart at 6 a.m.

Where to stay: Eco-Tours de Panama runs a tour from Panama City to the new Dolphin Island Lodge, a private Cuna-run inn next to the island of Achutupo. The cost for a one-night stay is $149, which includes air fare, four meals and a dugout canoe with guide at your disposal ($199 for two nights); tel. 011-507-36-30-76 or 36-35-75, fax 011-507-36-35-50. Eco-Tours also runs tours to the PEMASKY Project, a rain-forest preservation effort on Cuna land in the mainland mountains. Visitors go on a jungle excursion in four-wheel-drive vehicles to see the Indians’ work developing an agro-forest, hike a “medicinal trail” to see plant species that the Cunas use for healing, visit waterfalls and spot jungle birds, and stay one night in a jungle lodge. Cost is $149 per person.

Cruise ship stops: During the fall-winter cruise season, several ships make stops at the San Blas Islands as part of their Panama Canal transit itineraries. Call Holland America (206-281-3535), Princess (800-568-3262), Crown (800-327-5617), Seabourn (800-351-9595) or Special Expeditions (800-762-0003) cruise lines, or a cruise-specialty travel agent, for more information.

Safety: The political situation in Panama has stabilized since the 1989 invasion by U.S. forces. However, the U.S. State Department has advised tourists that armed robberies and purse snatchings are common in the country’s two major cities, Panama City and Colon, so visitors should be cautious.

For more information: Panama has no tourism office in the United States, but there is an embassy in Washington. Call (202) 483-1407. Visitors need a tourist card to enter, which is provided by the airlines.