Wow! What a fantastic sail trip from Cartagena to El Porvenir, Panama through the San Blas Islands! Los tres spoonadores were prolly very lucky with both our boat, captain and fellow sailors. We didn't get to do much research about it as we left kinda in a rush. Our boats name was Sacanagem, and the french/brasilian captain Federico has been sailing for 40 years. After a quick meeting with him the day before departure we decided that thing appeared to be as they should regarding safety, food, time etc... We were a bit delayed out of Cartagena, apparently the guy that was in charge of immigration at the docks didn't feel like stamping our passports as he was in a huge fight with his wife. Eventually he came around to it and around 8 PM we set sail for Panama.

None of the excited little spoons had experienced sailing like this before, and neither had any of the others on the boat. One American, five dutchlings and an aussie accompanied us. It took exactly one hour in high sea before the weakest spoon got sea sick, some might know him as ze German. His seasickness was quickly followed by other land crabs and the next morning many were puking their guts out. The sea wasn't even rough, but both new spoons were broken. In fact only the supreme spoon was the only one feeling good on the whole boat! This is speculations, but obviously I must be a better craft than the others as I wasn't the slightest seasick whatsoever.

Our captain was strict, which is a good thing when it comes to safety, but also a total schizophrenic with some serious anger management issues. But that aside, he was a funny, experienced and great captain. Food was mostly brilliant, he was def a good cook. Combined with lots of sparkling brown gold all was set for a magical trip.

The crossing is a bit less than 200 nautic miles, and is supposed to take between 40-48 hours. We were fortunate and made good speed. 35 hours later the supreme spoon and his 9 loyal, sea sick companions arrived Panama and the San Blas Islands. The archipelago consists of approximately 378 small tropical islands, 49 of them inhabited by the indiginous Kuna Yala people. We spent three amazing days sailing between different islands, snorkling with stingrays, eaglerays and hundreds of colourful fish, visiting the indiginous people, enjoying cold beers, getting to know each other on the boat and even some seriously bad attempts to fish. We had barbecues on the beach, diving competitions from the roof and simply put, having the time of our lifes.

The last couple of days has been spent in Panama City, looking at fat people, looking at food, looking at a canal, looking at Facebook, looking at other backpackers, looking at ourselves, looking at naked girls, looking at cans of tuna, looking at rain, looking at my beer, looking a dead people, looking at flip cup, looking at Ling the Chinese, looking at movies, looking at Lord Voldemort, looking at a strange dog, looking at Swiss army knives and looking at other people looking at you. But the very best thing about Panama City is how all the girls keeps telling us how beautiful spoons we are...!

Tomorrow we are bound for Bocas del Toro. Heard both good, not so good and even bad things about, so we shall see how things turn out. The epic journey continues...