Playing in the San Blas

Thursday, September 27, 2012

The San Blas are an archipelago of more than 300 islands. There are an abundance of reefs providing some of the best snorkeling you can imagine. The sea is full of fish; tiny pin sized fish that are surely hatchlings, schools of small fish, and schools of medium sized fish. Then you have a few larger fish coming by now and then, but I think most of the bigger fish stay in the deeper water. The reefs are alive with your typical reef fish and all kinds of coral.

As you approach the sandy beaches of an island the bottom is littered with star fish. Too bad they're not edible because they certainly are plentiful. And they would be so easy to catch. I wonder how far they actually move in a day because they don't seem to move at all. But then, if they were edible, I'm sure there wouldn't be so many of them around.


The Kunas are superb skin divers and often bring their catch by our boat. We were snorkeling the other day and had the opportunity to watch a Kuna man and his son spear fishing. He was using a Hawaiian sling to catch fish and he was also hunting langoustines. These are essentially lobsters without the front claws. The tail makes for excellent eating and we've have had a couple of nice meals of these.

We see lots of spotted eagle rays and sting rays, plenty of conch and sand dollars (my collection of sand dollars is growing daily!) and in the empty conch shells, we find the new tenants - hermit crabs. There is evidence of crabs on every beach - you can tell by the numerous holes in the sand but by the time we get close they have all scurried back to their homes.

Oh, and did I mention the jelly fish? There are a lot of them this time around. We didn't see any when we were here in May. There are hundreds of small walnut sized jelly fish. Yes, they sting. It feels like a small ting and most of the time it is hardly bothersome. Jens seems to have a delayed reaction to their stings. He had several on both arms that swelled up and got a bit white and hard for a day or two. He now goes snorkeling with a long sleeved t-shirt. They don't seem to affect the rest of us. I try and avoid them anyway, especially the larger ones.

What shall we do today? Let's go snorkeling. What? Again? We did that yesterday and the day before that. Actually we've gone snorkeling at least twice each day for the past 14 days. Yup, I'm getting my fill of snorkelling. Time to move on I think.

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