Guna Yala Hike

On February 25, 1925, the Guna (or Kuna, depending on who you talk to), an indigenous group along the Caribbean coast of Panama, won their independence.  For years before their culture and traditions had been repressed by the Panamanian government and the Catholic Church, and finally they came together and fought against their oppressors.  Eighty-eight years later, they are still widely discriminated against, but their culture thrives and their traditions live on within their semi-autonomous comarca.  Every February 25, they remember their independence day through re-enactments, ceremonies and celebrations.

88 years later, I found myself sleeping on the concrete floor of a stranger’s house with 27 other volunteers the night before a reputedly grueling two-day hike north across the country to celebrate the Guna independence day on the island of Ustupo.  Before dinner a veteran related every difficult part of the hike, detailing steep climbs, multiple river crossings, and warning of no contingency plan should someone pass out.  As it turned out, all of what we had heard was true.  It was one of the most difficult things I have done (though not as bad as climbing up Volcán Barú) and definitely one of the most rewarding.  We started early the first day with high spirits, but as the dirt road cutting through pastures turned into a winding trail through the jungle, I began to question my endurance.  By the time we made it to lunch in Nurra, the capital of the Comarca Guna de Wargandi, I was a little concerned.  We had repeatedly gone up hills, without, somehow, going back down, and I was having a hard time keeping up with the rest.  Despite my best efforts to keep my backpack light (including a last-minute purge of half my clothes), the weight was slowing me down and wearing me out.  Of course, I was not alone in my suffering, and there really was no turning back now, so I took heart and sucked it up and kept going.

The trail was beautiful.  We walked among tall, fat trees centuries old and beneath a thick canopy of interwoven leaves far above.  Large palms and bright green leaves the size of a chess boards continually smacked us in the face as we trudged through the well-preserved forest of the Comarca.  We had beautiful views of the mountains looming before us on our journey, and the water in the river was crystal clear as we filled up our water bottles and learned to love or hate the taste of iodine tablets.  As the day began to close on that first day, I learned to distrust our guides, who, through a desire to keep our spirits up, insistently told us for three hours that we were only half an hour away.  So, when we did finally arrive at the river bank that was to be our campground for the night, I dropped my bags in the first spot available and jumped in the river without a thought for my clothes.

Within a few minutes, we were all in the river, washing our sweaty and dirt-stained clothes, soaping up and rinsing off, and just relaxing in the cool, clear water.  It was heaven!  The beauty of water, I find, is that it supports your weight and lets your feet take a break, and that night, I relished in it.  Eventually, we cooked an excellent pasta dinner (well, I mostly helped to eat it, kudos to the chefs!) and allowed ourselves to forget the trials of today and what was to come tomorrow.

Although we aimed to leave at 7am the next day, we didn’t get out until 8, as we had all probably expected would happen.  Today, the second day, I did much better.  I still managed to be one of the last people, and by the time the day was over I could barely lift my legs, but as the weight of my pack numbed my back and my hips, movement became mechanical and I could keep up a little better.  The second day we had to cross the cordillera, or the mountainous backbone of the country.  This included a steep trail infamously named the miranalgas, because on the way up all you can see is the nalga (butt) of the person in front of you.  Luckily, it was our lot to climb down rather than up, and only one member of my group slipped, sliding down in the half the time it took the rest of us to walk down.  For the second half of the day we traded out hills for the river, and spent about 30% of the afternoon walking through water in our hiking boots.  Eventually, our path led us out of the forest and into fields of bananas and coffee, providing a more level ground for our torn up feet, and finally to the coast.

We could hear the ocean long before we could see it.  We walked through mangroves, glancing hopefully ahead trying to see the ocean, which would signify the end of our journey.  Finally, it appeared amidst gnarled mangrove roots jutting out of the brown water – a welcome sight, if not as majestic as we imagined.  There was a boat waiting to take us to the island where we would be staying for the next three nights, but since the mangroves are generally shallow, we had to wade out into the muddy water to catch our ride.

The island was remarkable.  Imagine a maze of bamboo houses with bamboo fenced-in yards lining streets of wide walkways.  It was a city of bamboo!  Of course, this meant that the breeze could pass more easily through the houses, and since the roofs were made of palm leaves instead of tin, the island was much cooler than a city of concrete would have been.  There were of course concrete buildings, many of which were poorly built and subsequently abandoned, so that the island was dotted with two- and three-story concrete ruins rising amongst clumps of bamboo structures.  The island was filled with houses, tiendas, bakeries and basketball courts.  There was a school that went from elementary all the way to university level, two restaurants, a town center and oh so many children.  The traditional Guna dress for the women is a mola blouse, a skirt of fabric wrapped around their waist, and a bright red scarf over their head, and while all the older women wear this outfit, the children ran around in shorts and shirts, and sometimes less.

Of course, many of these wonders we did not discover until the morning after our arrival.  During our stay we would be sleeping in one of the dilapidated two-story concrete mammoths, and our hostess, who lived in the bamboo house attached to ours, told us which parts of the wooden floor we should not step on and showed us our bucket bath shower downstairs.  Spots claimed and a shower line formed, we were all prepared to eat, sleep, and save exploration for the morrow.  One of the wonders we did discover that night, however, was our latrine.  It is the custom of the Guna to do all of their business over the ocean, where it will be tidily taken care of by nature, so the latrine we were allowed to use was a two-minute walk away from the house on the sea.  The sun had already set, the moon was full, and the tide was coming in, so the leaning wooden latrine standing above the dark surging ocean impressed me less with a sense of security than with awe.

Since the coast of the island was lined with latrines, swimming was not really an option, so the next day I spent recovering my calories and getting to know the island.  While we were there, our breakfasts and lunches were provided for free.  We all arrived at the community house and waited as individual families came and took groups of 2 to 6 to their houses to eat with them.  While many of the Guna are shy, just as many spoke Spanish, or even English, and wanted to get to know us and what we thought of their home, their culture, and their celebration – more than once I was offered free bananas to eat.  By the end of our stay I had sampled two of the Guna’s main exports – fresh coconuts and molas, the handmade fabric artwork the women make of geometric designs and representations of nature.

Before we had arrived, my fellow hikers had mentioned that there is a high rate of albinism in the Guna, a fact that did not fully hit me until we were on the island and I saw for myself.  Apparently they are considered special, to have been touched by the moon or the sun (there was some disagreement between the accounts), and I had expected white hair, white skin and red eyes (the only albinos I have ever seen are rats and rabbits).  I was therefore completely amazed to find that the Guna albinos have blonde hair, pale or sunburned skin, and light eyes – in essence, like me.  If it weren’t for their Guna features, their dress, and the fact that they spoke Guna, I would have taken them for gringos.  How to explain how I felt?  I have spent all my lif thinking of blonde hair and light eyes as a normal thing, and here I discovered albinos were not too different.  After a year of being the only person not latina in my community, I finally had a glimpse into what my community sees when they see me.

The actual Independence Day was the second day of our stay on the island, and the morning dawned with a parade.  All the women wore their traditional dress, and all the men and the volunteers who did not have the outfit wore a red shirt to represent the blood that was shed.  We walked all over the island, ending in a yard where they re-enacted the war.  The day before they had played out all the acts of oppression the Panamanians had done against the Guna, but on the Independence Day they showed the Guna rising up and out-smarting their oppressors by attacking them on a holiday when the soldiers were all drunk.  The Guna playing the Latinos dressed the part, spiking their hair and painting black facial hair (the Guna themselves do not have any facial hair, an excellent adaptation to living in this humid climate). 

Once the war was won, everyone moved to the casa de chicha that held giant pots of chicha fuerte, or fermented sugar cane juice with cacao.  And the chicha was bien fuerte.  On the women’s side of the house, female descendents of those who had died in the war brought around small calabash bowls filled with the chicha to women waiting to drink.  The men, on the other side, had to form lines of eight and dance and shout up to the big pots where they were each given a bigger calabash bowl of chicha, which they had to chug.  As one can imagine, after about 15 minutes everyone, including the small old ladies and the towering gringos were having a grand old time happily singing and dancing around.  Since the festivities started early, around 11am the chicha ran out and everyone staggered away in search of a carb-filled lunch and a soft place to crash.  We were told the casa de chicha would open again at 4pm, but none of the volunteers were feeling up to it and chose instead a hearty meal.

The following day was our day of departure.  Method of travel: a 5 hour boat ride leaving at 6am, followed by a 2 hour car ride to Panama City.  Luckily, it did not rain and the waters were not as rough as years before, and I am happy to say no one on my boat got seasick.  We zoomed between other islands dotted along the Caribbean coast, some as populated as the one we left, while others were left inexplicably vacant.  There were a few islands that had only one or two buildings and a welcoming beach for tourists, but the majority was football-field-sized islands crammed with wild vibrant vegetation.

When we finally reached the city, I stayed the night with friends who wanted a good meal, a soft mattress, and an air-conditioned room, luxuries that we often do not get in our daily lives.  During the hike, a friend had related it to our time in Peace Corps – a memorable, once-in-a-lifetime experience filled with moments of misery.  Our hike was merely a more concentrated form of misery.  But more than once on this trip – swimming in the cleanest river I’d seen in Panama, partying with a bunch of tiny old women, eating coconuts and bananas with a family in a bamboo house – I thought with great satisfaction, This is my life!  I won’t get the chance to go on this hike next year, but if I could, I might be tempted to forget the concentrated misery and give it a whirl again.