Colón, Friday 4 August
Ming and I and the bikes are on board. What a performance. First come the extras. Twenty dollars to load each bike. Ming is quiet and polite and speaks little Spanish. The boat crew mistake good manners for weakness. Mistake. Ming knows his mind and doesn’t shift without considerable thought. We argue twenty dollars each down to fifteen for both. I do the talking.
The big black woman in the big-bellied wharf-master’s office tries to hit for an extra ten dollars for customs clearance. I ask to be shown the regulation in the book. She surrenders sulkily. Colón, Colón, why art thou Colón? And why do downtown Colonese behave so shittily?
Not all. The gate guards are friendly and helpful. The extended family who run the bar-café at the gate are always welcoming.
Night-time and a crescent of lamps and palm trees give Colón’s waterfront a spurious normalcy. Latino dance music blares from the café. A cool light breeze rises off the sea. I count sixteen ships out in the roads and listen to the throb of a tug’s diesel engine. The immigration officer has visited. Much shouting accompanied his discovery of two extra men and a young woman not entered on crew or passenger list. He has departed with the captain and our passports. We were due to sail some time between midnight and two.
The money man is yelling at his cell phone.
I will refer to the money man as ‘MM’. He is medium brown, paunchy, clipped hair, wears spectacles and is forever on a cellular telephone. He shouts at the telephone to make sure his message reaches whoever he is talking with. Shouting has become habitual and he carries it over into general conversation. I fear an argument over payment for unloading the bikes. I attempt to clarify exactly where and when and how we disembark.
MM decides that I am stupid. ‘Look,’ he says, ‘we are contrabandistas.’ Smugglers. ‘We come in to the coast and unload when we receive the all-clear. Three days, five, twenty …’
‘At a wharf.’
‘On the beach.’
‘Oh,’ I say.
I tell Ming.
Ming is a student of Zen Buddhism. He smiles and says, ‘We wanted an adventure.’
We sail from Colón at half past four. My fellow male passengers sleep on top of the deck cargo. They resemble a line of sardines. I bought a foam exercise mat in Panama City. I find space on the edge of the cargo below a car seat and a fold-up bicycle. I have to get up in the night. I pee over the rail and then lie awake. Sailing is a relief.
Deck cargo adds to the ship’s roll on heavy swells from the north. A pretty pale mulatto in her late teens is the only woman. She is first to throw up. So does a thin black man who smokes both dope and a white powder up on the steel canopy shading the afterdeck – he narrowly avoids my shoes. A young male Latino is a further casualty. Ming speaks of a headache. I sit forward of the wheelhouse on a steel hatch in the early afternoon and watch the coast. Curious as to our progress, I ask MM where we are. We have passed Portobelo. He points to Mirimar and tells me we will sleep the night at one of the San Blas Islands.
We round a point and see the first of the San Blas Islands spread in a vast circle. The islands protect us from the swell. I consider alerting Ming. He lived his first nineteen years in Indonesia. He is familiar with small tropical islands, coconut palms, mosquitoes, beaches infested with sandflies. I let him sleep a further hour.
San Blas Islands, Saturday 5 August
I consult Ming as to whether this vast circle of islands is an atoll. Ming’s doctorate is in electronic engineering rather than geography. His intellectual honesty is restful. When questioned on something of which he is ignorant, he says, ‘I don’t know.’ Then he considers the question for a while, turning it this way and that.
We share a broad ignorance of the San Blas Islands. We know that they are Coona territory. The outer islands are seldom more than a hundred yards in length, uninhabited and the most romantic. Low mounds of pale, freshly washed sand, they sprout a single topknot of skinny coconut palms. Foam breaks over rock and coral between some islets. In the lee of the reef lie yachts at anchor in silken waters, where the breeze keeps the mosquitoes and sandflies at bay. The inner islands are larger, often fringed with mangrove and harbour communities, thatched huts packed close.
We approach Tigre Island the day of the Coona intercommunity football tournament. The football field is the only open space on the island. Dusk and we watch the players in the final match pelt helter-skelter in pursuit of a ball that is invisible to us.
Our captain eases the Don Sebas towards the end of a crude wooden jetty. Three Coona men sit on the jetty. They ignore the Don Sebas. The ship nudges the jetty and a sailor hurls a line. The line falls in the water. Only then does a Coona rise and wait for the next throw. I sense no hostility. Lack of interest is nearer the mark.
Ming and I stroll through the village to the football field. The huts are thatched roofs, stick walls, sand floors and no litter. We are greeted with quiet politeness by all those we pass. They are small people, Tibetan in feature, although dark skinned. The women are noticeably square of shoulder and wear footless stockings of strung beads.
A fence protects the open area surrounding the football field. A notice proclaims a tourist zone. A row of ten small huts is the community’s tourist accommodation. A small thatched restaurant faces the huts from across the field. The shaded terrace is in two sections, male and female. Two young blonde German women eat dinner in the female zone. Two teenage Coona maidens sit at a second table with their backs to the football match. Fish, yucca, rice and fried bananas are on the menu. Ming and I order bottled water. The water comes chilled from an old kerosene icebox. The plastic seals on the bottles are torn. Presumably the bottles have been refilled from the village well. The two German women have their backs to us and intend keeping their backs to us. Travel is competitive among many backpackers. These young women were the sole foreigners on Tigre Island. This is their adventure. We are unwelcome.
The crew and passengers from the Don Sebas arrive at the field. They are boisterous and out of place.
Ming and I are the foreigners on board the hell ship. Foreigners are stupid by definition. Next are two oldies, one of whom is marked by posture as ex-military. He is a tall man, mahogany-skinned, balding, clipped military moustache and a bush of white sprouting from his ears. Our conversation is limited to his barked greetings in English. These are his only English words. Speaking Spanish to me would show ignorance or weakness on his part so we have no conversation. His companion is a small black man, monosyllabic.
The handsome young Latino and the skinny black man who threw up close by my shoes make a couple. Mostly they sleep. When awake, they clamber on to the canopy and return with glazed eyes.
A tattooed ex-prisoner in his late twenties joins them on occasion. He is heavily muscled and forever exercises his neck as boxers do in the movies. He has been free a while and his jail muscles have grown a layer of fat.
I suspected a small middle-aged Latino man with hooked nose and sunken mouth to have lost his teeth. Not so. He is the most companionable of those on board and sits with me in the bows. He has been working in Panama. He is returning home with a gift for his wife: the carefully wrapped sections of a wooden bed frame, a double bed.
Of the crew, the cook is fifties, balding and underweight – not surprising given the food. He wears shorts and a saffron shirt and squats on deck to scrub his pots at the tap, chop meat, fish, peel yucca, slice onions. MM shouts. The captain and the engineer are brothers. The captain speaks quietly and seldom. The engineer never speaks. The assistant engineer-deckhand is a muscle-bound oaf. He believes that he is a brilliant humorist. All his jokes are gross and illustrated with gross actions. Most involve effeminate males. His number-one friend is the companion of the young girl. The girl appears only when we dock. While at sea, she is prostrate in a small dank airless six-bunk cabin aft of the wheelhouse. The cabin opens on to the galley area. Little wonder that she throws up. Her man is off-black, late twenties, with a good body and ready mouth. He is also an addict of jokes at the expense of the effeminate. He has a loud voice and acts his jokes. I find him vile from day one – a judgement supported when he boasts of his conquests and of putting the girls to work in Cartagena – a pimp.
Ming and I seek peace on the afterdeck canopy. The smokers visit briefly for refills. Midnight and rain forces us back onto the cargo. The discomfort is barely eased by brief interludes of sleep.
Mid-evening, a fullish moon, and Ming and I walk through Tigre Island village. MM is shouting on the telephone at a cabin by the community meeting house. Cable & Wireless is the provider. The connection is by radio. I have twenty minutes left on my Cable & Wireless plastic and could call home. Bernadette has a rough day ahead and might consider being woken at four in the morning as more unfriendly than loving.
Seats in a semicircle face across swept sand beyond the community house to a table on which stand a hi-fi or lo-fi system. A Coona man asks whether we need bread. All Coona appear to speak quietly and I don’t at first understand that the bread is merely an excuse. His true wish is to show us a badge on the door of his hut. The badge was given him by a biker stranded on the island for a month while waiting for a boat. It is the badge of the Latin American Biker’s Association, Montevideo, Uruguay.
The Coona man recounts the occurrence of the Latin American biker with the same almost childlike simplicity that I recall in the marina janitor persecuted by the irritable mother-in-law. Childish? Simple? Or full of wonder at a world we take for granted and despoil?
San Blas Islands, Sunday 6 August
Mid-afternoon and the skipper creeps through a narrow channel between reefs to shelter in the lee of the only San Blas island with a hill. Next comes much yelling as he runs the Don Sebas aground while approaching a concrete wharf where two ships already lie.
I wondered this afternoon whether dislike of sailing by night is a Coona thing. Or is the skipper doubtful of his ability to thread the reefs? I asked to see the chart. There is no chart. Ah. Nor are there any lifebelts. The dinghy is powered by a temperamental outboard and has no oars. I relate this information to Ming the Unperturbed. Ming is unperturbed. Logic protects him. We wanted an adventure. We are having an adventure.
Ming and I are ashore on an island with a hill. We have eaten next to nothing since boarding in Colón. We have slept briefly. We haven’t bathed and we haven’t defecated – the lavatory is as vile as the crew’s humour. A Coona man asks where we come from and where we intend travelling. He is polite, cultured. He owns a thirty-foot dugout canoe and two outboard motors. Women buy in Colón’s Free Zone. The Coona runs them into Colombia. He has made two trips this week.
We are not smugglers. We are legal – a strange concept to this Coona.
We long to be put ashore at a regular port in Colombia, a port with immigration officers willing to stamp our passports and customs officers happy to document our bikes.
Very weird.
The Coona ponders: Well maybe, although it is unusual. Perhaps this once.
How much?
Again he ponders. Say, 150 dollars for Ming, self, Suzuki and Honda?
How long?
Depending on the weather, five hours, possibly six.
Ming and I imagine the hellish alternative: darkness, rolling deck, blackmailed over unloading charges, a launch to an unknown beach. A hundred and fifty dollars is cheap.
Can we talk in the morning?
‘Certainly,’ says the Coona. ‘Talk any time.’
The Cable & Wireless office is a thatched hut with stick walls. Connection may be slow and there are four plastic chairs. A stick screen divides the chairs from two cabins. MM is bellowing at the telephone. Will we sail tomorrow? MM doesn’t know. Nor does he know our precise destination – or the destination is secret.
Of the two boats alongside the village wharf, one has made two approaches to the Colombian mainland, only to be warned off. Ming and I imagine being arrested, the only legals.
A young Coona sits with us. He introduces himself as David. He speaks competent English. He is nineteen years old and in his last year of high school in Panama City where his dad works as a carpenter. David has a website and intends working in the islands as a tourist guide.
Behind us, the village kids are watching a DVD in a community hut – for the Coona, everything has its place. The kids are very quiet. Ming peeks in. The movie is a Hong Kong kung fu.
Ming and I ask the two women on duty at the community store whether prawns are available.
Certainly – and lobster and fresh fish.
Our juices bubble in anticipation.
But not tonight, say the women. A girl child has been born in the village. Girls are the core of the Coona community. The birth of a girl demands much ceremony. Everyone is tired. Tomorrow we can eat prawns.
With chilli?
Certainly with chilli.
Ming and I love this island. We love the people. We love their good manners and their quietness and their consideration – and we love the thought of escape from the Don Sebas. We will spend two days here before shipping the bikes by canoe to Turbo. We will swim from a clean beach. We will eat camarones a el diablo – devilled prawns.
The crew summon us to eat on board.
Ming and I would rather starve.
In the morning we will talk with the owner of the canoe.
Colombia, Monday 7 August
Ming and I sleep up on the canopy. Rain drives us in. The revolting deckhand has occupied my nook. I doze in one of the loose car seats. The ex-military man swings in a hammock nearby. His farts would startle a deaf horse. Ming fares little better. We rise with dawn and spot a canoe speeding through the reefs. Our canoe. Our saviour.
We rush to English-speaking David’s house. It is not his house. Coona houses belong to women. The man moves in to his wife’s house – or, in David’s case, his mother-in-law’s house. The mother-in-law is baking bread. High-school David’s wife sits in a hammock. She and David have one small toddler. A second is on its way. David is picking coconuts on the mountain with his father-in-law and his wife’s younger brother.
Mother-in-law is deeply serious, a thinker, and committed to the community.
She had wanted an education for her daughter. Education is important. Throughout the world, women are considered merely part human and part beast of burden. Only education will free women. She is less wondrous than Coona men, more practical. She talks of another daughter in Panama City who has a mestizo child and has taken on Latino ways. It happens, she says, although mostly it is the men who leave. The community demands responsibility from each member. Few men are responsible. While she talks, she feeds us delicious bread and fish smoked in a rolled leaf.
We leave to speak with MM. MM is on the telephone.
David arrives from the mountain with a sack of coconuts. The owner of our canoe has crossed to another island to meet the flight from Panama City.
He will return in the early afternoon – if the plane is on time.
The crew hustles us to board. MM has the all-clear. The hell ship is sailing. Our options have run out.
No land in sight and ten-foot rollers all afternoon and into the night as we cross the gulf. Cloud covers the moon and we sail without lights. Tension is thick and heavy as a loaf of wet bread. We peer into the dark. At three o’clock a small light flashes.
A deeper blackness gains shape – rocks and walls rather than trees. Five big outboard launches speed alongside. Two huge men are the first to board. Twenty black stevedores follow. Side tarpaulins are furled. Tarpaulins are yanked clear of the deck cargo. The big men stand on truck tyres to conduct the unloading. Everything is labelled. Stevedores shout the name on a bale or carton. MM shouts the launch number. These are pros. They have done this a hundred times or a thousand times. The speed impresses. MM screams for extra care as two big jet-skis are manhandled into one launch. Two outboard motors follow – high horsepower by the size of the cartons. This is an upmarket launch, side rails, centre wheel. I watch as it speeds off into the night. The skipper warns us to tell immigration and customs that we came by launch from the Panamanian border.
Ming and I and the bikes are last to be loaded off the hell ship. First there comes an argument over payment to the stevedores. We settle at twenty dollars for each bike and find ourselves in an open launch at half past four in a pitch-black morning. The coxswain is an onlooker while three black stevedores lower the bikes. The outboard won’t start. The coxswain curses and yanks the starter cord a dozen times. The motor fires. The coxswain engages forward gear. The motor stalls. The coxswain curses and yanks the cord again while the crew of the hell ship watch and bawl advice.
Neither Ming nor I is confident.
Finally we splutter away from the ship. We run at most a quarter of a mile to a beach below rocks and a ruined stone wall. Two of the black men leap into the water and hold the launch steady against the surge. Ming and I prepare to disembark. The coxswain disabuses us. The black men want twenty dollars. We have negotiated the price to be paid on arrival. Apparently this isn’t arrival. Rather than argue in the dark, I pay ten and we head back out to sea.
We run parallel to a heavy swell. Cloud covers the moon. The launch rolls, the launch pitches, the motor stutters. This is not good.
True, it is an adventure.
Not all adventures are good.
Twenty anxious minutes pass before a thin scattering of lights in the distance indicates a coast. Clouds clear. The moon is almost full. We discern low buildings, a ramp, a dozen men waiting. The crossing, if it was a crossing, has taken forty-five minutes. The outboard stalls. There are no oars. Waves threaten to fling the launch on the rocks. The coxswain yells at his assistant, who fights the bows straight with a long punt pole.
All the men waiting on shore are black. They are shirtless and wear shorts or pants rolled above the knee. They wade out, grab the launch by the stern and run it up the sand. They lift the Honda first, carrying it clear of the water and up the stone ramp. The Suzuki weighs a ton. The men gasp and complain and yet keep the bike dry. I watch them and feel immense relief. Finally the awful voyage is done with.