San Blas Islands

Um, actually there's a very interesting community not so far from Isla Palenque called Soloy, which is the Ngobe-Bugle people, which is extremely, uh, interesting to visit as a, from a cultural perspective.

Then you have the Guna people on the San Blas Islands on the Caribbean side, and then you have the Emberá people on the Darien Gap, and then also closer to the city.

So that's also very interesting.

Um, I also think that the proximity to the US and the great connectivity that we have with the, you know, main cities in the US also makes it very easy, and also interesting because you could do a multi-destination.

So as I walked through northern Argentina, Bolivia, and Peru in particular, uh, it just became almost comical, because C's and K's are interchangeable.

Once I was up in the Guna Yala, the, the folk head of that community that, of the San Blas Islands is how we know of...

The people are called the Guna people, and they had all come together and voted the letter G out of their alphabet.

So the idea of language as an evolving thing and de-attaching correctness from spelling took me several years and quite a few thousand miles to be able to release my attachment to that and be like, as long as you know what you're talking about, and as long as you can convey that to the person to whom you're speaking, that's what matters, not getting it right.

[laughs]

... on this trip because we left the Guna Yala Islands, which are very peaceful, quiet, calm, serene.

And we went to an area called Sapzurro, which is, so there is an area called the Darien Gap.

Which is between Colombia and Panama.

Once you get through there it's it's pretty real isn't it.

So we from from Colombia we went through the San Blas islands which are just picture close card little islands.

Really.

And we anchored off those and then we made our way to Panama and We were originally in the in the north part of the Panama Canal in the marina there which was which was you know lovely.

Isn't that strange? Yeah.

And so we ended up sailing from Cartagena to Cologne via the San Blas Islands and Hakuna Nation.

Yeah.

And I get it.

Save big money at Menards.

the ship railway project however has never succeeded in attaining the degree of popular approval that has been bestowed upon canal propositions the general sentiment appears to be summed up in the epigrammatic expression a ship is never so well borne as when water borne the canal routes which have attained the greatest degrees of public favor are the atrato san blas panama and nicaragua atrato routes the gulf of darien an arm of the caribbean sea at the point where the isthmus joins the main continent of south america receives the waters of the rio de atrato a navigable stream which rises and flows due north about two hundred miles into the gulf its watershed is bounded on the west by the continental divide which here hugs the pacific coast very closely and has several passes of moderate altitude various projects have been proposed to utilize this river and its tributaries to approach the pacific coast as near as possible and then cut through the range to the sea of these projects the two that have received the most favor and attention are the two which utilize the napipi and turondo rivers tributaries of the atrato but neither has been regarded with as much favor as the more northerly routes the napipi atrato route provides for making use of the atrato river for a distance of about one hundred forty miles and the construction of about thirty miles of canal of which three and a half miles would be in tunnel the estimated cost of this canal is about ninety eight million dollars the chief objections to this route are the long stretch of river navigation before the canal proper is reached the uncertainty of tunnel construction and maintenance the aggregation of a number of locks close together near the pacific coast and the uncertainty of a sufficient water supply for the summit to level the turondo atrato route is a modification of the napipi atrato route the project being to leave the atrato river about eighty miles from its mouth and then to cut a sea-level canal through a tunnel under the continental divide into the pacific the flow of the atrato river being diverted into the pacific ocean The length of the cut from the Atrato to the Pacific would be 43.2 miles.

The cost of the work has been variously estimated from $135 million to $156 million.

The chief difficulties of this route are the considerable tunnel excavations and the control of the floodwaters of the Atrato River.

Nicaragua This route lies between the Gulf of San Blas in the Caribbean Sea and the mouth of the Bayano River on the Pacific.

It is the narrowest part of the entire isthmus, being only 30 miles from ocean to ocean.

It is proposed that the level of water in the canal be that of ordinary high tide in the Pacific Ocean.

No work of any such magnitude or under such conditions has yet been attempted, and it is claimed that the gloom of a tunnel, the constant shower of chilled water from its roofs and sides, and its deoxygenated condition would rapidly undermine the health of the workmen.