Kieran Earley

The opportunity arose at a convenient point in my life. My editor had commissioned a travel piece about the perennial appeal of the “desert island,” and my location in Panama City as a Latin American correspondent made it easy to sketch out a proposal: two weeks on the San Blas Islands in the crystal Caribbean waters off the north coast of the country.

Competent, usually reliable, and cheap, I was in the right place at the right time. A middle-aged misanthrope on a desert island was a neat angle, too.

I made my pitch and got confirmation of the assignment by email a few weeks later. The T&Cs Zoom call with Jan, my editor, was typically short and sour. She liked to examine her writers’ faces for any traces of deviance and pin them to the brief.

“Don’t make a bollocks of this, Aaron.”

“I’ll try. Thanks for the opportunity.”

“Five thousand words by the end of the month, please.”

“Of course. You know you can rely on me, Jan.”

"We both know that isn't entirely true, don’t we? Remember, this is for the Sunday edition, so make sure you pitch it consistently to that demographic. You know the sort of thing, a few literary flourishes here and there. Nothing too populist.”

“Gothca.”

“Never funny. Go and write something good. I’d like a check in please after the first week, a meaty abstract and maybe some drafted sections.”

The call ended abruptly, and I was on my way.

The San Blas archipelago is a cluster of around three hundred and fifty tiny tropical islands within striking distance of mainland Panama by speedboat. Fifty thousand indigenous Guna Yala people inhabit about eighty of these islands. Check online images to confirm your expectations. The sea, a full spectrum of blue, caresses pristine white sands. Occasional clouds scud through an otherwise azure sky. Palm trees encircle a picture of serenity, shielded and secure from the chaotic influences of a complicated world. It’s the taste of coconut, chocolate and rum.

At first glance from social media posts, the San Blas might look similar to the fashionable and luxurious resorts of the Maldives, but they couldn’t be more different in terms of geological formation, price and the experience of being there.

Both sets of islands, however, do share an existential threat from rising sea levels. You’d better get packing pretty damn quick if you want a desert island vibe in either of these places. They will be under water in our lifetime. I expected climate change would be a darker strand in my writing. A sinister counterpoint for the Guna Yala amid their blissful setting.

And the personal demons I had collected in life were coming with me, too. I am a mid-career journalist with a broken marriage, and an estranged son back in the UK. Burnout, breakdown, whatever you want to call it, is not a path I’d recommend to enlightenment. But I’m getting better, and this project promised further respite. Being a castaway sounded perfect. Space and an opportunity to process change were a gift. I was still looking for something meaningful in life and maybe I’d find it in the San Blas. What a gig.

But things didn’t go as expected. Do they ever?

That I wrote this story instead of a standard travelogue didn’t help my sketchy finances or lead to a straightforward conversation with Jan. But I don’t regret the decision. I have never been more compelled to write. Ever. I can thank the islands for that, at least.

Once I had returned to Panama City, I wrote everything down inside a week whilst doing further research into the history of the San Blas and visiting museums dedicated to the Guna Yala culture. The words ran from me like steady beads of sweat in the tropical humidity. I stopped to feed myself cheap tacos and every afternoon I’d pace the sidewalks. Random walking helped me think in the breathless heat of the city. Sleep, when it came, was fitful beneath the hypnotic rotors of the ceiling fan.

Even getting to the San Blas was pretty epic. The Government had signed off on a controversial open-cast copper mining contract, sparking riots and civil disobedience. Panamanians from all social and ethnic groups united in revolutionary spirit. Tear gas canisters littered the manicured lawns of the tourist friendly Cinta Costera. This polished coastal promenade of progress was empty by day and a seething mass of reggaeton-blasting, masked marchers by night – all mightily pissed off. It was quite scary, even for someone accustomed to seeing how quickly things can blow up in Latin America.

As more information about the contract came to light, the protestors added fresh injury to their placards. The speed of the deal, the lack of transparency or due process, and the mining company's authority to evict families living on a seam of ore fanned the flames. Those most likely to be affected were struggling in a daily battle to find food, fresh drinking water, and access to medical care. The former president's conviction for trousering investment funds was also in the news, ramping up the tension with allegations of corruption behind the scenes. Every time he came on TV to explain himself, he made it worse. As a journalist, it was fascinating to see an independent press playbook in action.

Panamanians have a strong sense of national identity, and when the press added further fuel to the fire, by representing the mining company as Canadian, the people went ballistic. An inflammatory theme I was familiar with. Hell, they were selling the country to foreigners, and the people weren’t even going to benefit? Central and South American states have a chequered political history with foreign investment, to say the least.

And more developed economies have pursued an exploitative agenda over the centuries, plundering natural resources, marginalising indigenous populations, and allowing venal national politicians to build vast villas with the spoils. The common call cards of so-called progress.

The increasingly vocal xenophobia made it dangerous for a six foot two, grey-haired gringo to be loping around the city. Crossing the street one day, a car slowed down to let me pass, but then sped up as I was halfway over the road. It would have hit me if I hadn’t leapt out of the way. The driver’s face was malevolent. I flipped him the bird as he screeched off and then feared such a gesture might spark his return and some violence. But it’s unlikely you will have read about the Panama protests in the UK press. Latin American politics rarely lands with a splash.

I carried on filing my reports, but there were always more than enough stories to digest closer to home and I rarely registered column inches. This was the greatest challenge of writing from Latin America. Ignorance and parochialism. Oh, those fiery Latinos are at it again, Margery. Moving on.

Last year, I’d managed to break into our Sunday sister paper with a detailed investigative piece in Mexico about a mayor implicated in drug trafficking. To an extent, I was still trading on the kudos from this article with Jan.

When I say I’m working from Panama, a vague recognition crosses people’s faces. Most mumble something about the canal or tax evasion before they reach for Google maps. But there is so much more to this place than non-doms and the surgical bypass between the Atlantic and Pacific oceans.

It’s a beautiful country with a genuine eco-spirit. A commitment manifest in actual environmental policy. They didn't fully connect the Pan-American highway in order to protect a vast area of virgin jungle in the Darien region bordering Colombia. You still can’t drive the full length of the American continents. It’s pretty wild down there, and illegal immigration is an ongoing humanitarian problem. But it’s as pure an area of green as this planet can offer today. In the Panamanian jungles, you can experience a primal human wonder and then a guilty appreciation for the challenges conquistadors faced in the 16th century.

Of course, this circuit breaker in the highway has the additional benefit of disrupting a primary drug trafficking route from the south, where coke production is concentrated.

So, the Americas start and finish in Panama, with the additional option of a shortcut across the globe. It is a wild collision of life, immigration, and cultures. A bridge between modernity and an ancient landscape. Dangerous but beautiful. Panama City itself is a thin wedge of development spreading east from the canal, squeezed in by the Pacific Ocean and the jungle only a few miles to the north.

Foreign powers eating into this jungle and decimating the country's ‘Green Gold’ was an unacceptable provocation. It smacked of the colonial enslavement the country had fought so hard to overcome. I must hand it to Latin American protesters; they don't give up easily and their cause seemed righteous enough from a neutral’s perspective.

Blockading major roads and the resulting economic squeeze was the tactic of choice to encourage the president to think twice. So it was a total miracle that the travel company’s transport got us out of the city.

The 4x4 chartered for the trip picked me up outside my apartment block in the darkness before dawn. We drove into the tourist quarter in Casco and collected a German couple who were sharing the ride. They looked incredibly young and vulnerable. Not surprising, considering the unexpected mayhem they must have encountered at the start of their holiday.

We were in the margins of the day. Time was in flux between the night clubs kicking out its lingering revellers, but before the city has fully woken and Fondas have lit their stoves to prepare the workers’ meaty breakfasts.

We hurtled down the eastern corridor, passing burnt-out cars and police officers on pre-dawn patrols. Our driver probably had a natural inclination to speed anyway, given his trade. He seemed to enjoy the incredulous, terrified look on the young man's face sitting alongside him in the front passenger seat. It wasn’t a certainty that we’d make it out of the city. We careered through the chaotic industrial landscape. The driver simultaneously drank his coffee, scoffed churros, left voice notes for his boss, and selected Bad Bunny tracks on Spotify.

I was sitting in the back with the more sanguine German girlfriend. There was kid's sit-and-ride at my feet, so I assumed this guy didn't have a total death wish and knew what he was doing.

There was palpable relief in the car when the countryside replaced concrete. We stopped at a petrol station to refuel and get a coffee. I fed a stray dog the remains of my pastry and watched the forecourt fill with similar vehicles, pulling up and doing the same thing as us. After about ten minutes, we zipped up and left the staging post.

A few miles on, the sun rose above the ridgeline, and we turned off the highway into the foothills of the mountains. I’d heard tales of this being an unmade track until recent times. That must have been a bone shaker on this roller-coaster route. Although we were grateful for the smooth, newly tarmacked road, it didn’t seem to belong there. The dense jungle on either side, the towering tree-covered peaks and the vast sky were really in charge around here.

As the strengthening sun picked out the deep, emerald valleys, it was easy to imagine the challenge of making a life here. It must have been crazily difficult in a pre-industrial age to cover even the short distance between the oceans in Panama. The jungle is an enormous knot of tightly woven trunks and vines of all species and thicknesses. It defies passage like a sentient enchanted forest. Kudos to the conquistadors for making it through that, if nothing else.

Even though the young woman spoke with impeccable English, the Germans weren't too chatty, so I exchanged some expressions of awe in Spanish with the driver. The pride and proprietorial spirit we'd left behind us in the city was clear at one point when he halted the car, bolted out and shouted up at a farmer whose cow had strayed onto the road.

If you plan to visit the place that inspired this story, you need to be aware that the self-determining district of the Guna Yala strictly controls entrance to its territory. Long queues, paperwork checks and fierce eyes defend a narco traffickers’ dream: miles of wild coast and shallow waters.

You also need to know that the Guna Yala flag is basically a Spanish flag, with a swastika in the middle. Not starting a conversation about this with my travelling companions was a credit to my mid-life maturity. The Guna have a rich cultural tradition and have fought to keep their indigenous identity. It was my intention to explore this and share the details in my travelogue. No doubt, someone would explain the flag at some point.

We made it through the mountain checkpoints and descended from the jungle into a chaotic and bustling port area. It was all milling tourists and 4x4s. Utterly incomprehensible.

In the midst of the crowd, our driver spotted a stocky man with a friendly, gap-toothed grin. He drove towards him, pulled up, and wound his window down.

“Hola, Felix! Como estas? Todo es bien?”

“Si, senor! Tienes mas monederos para nosotros?”

The driver nodded towards the passenger seats to indicate our presence and Felix beamed again before pointing the driver to a parking spot.

I suspected Felix was not his real name, and I couldn’t have known then how central he would be to my experience on the islands.

Once we’d pulled up, Felix helped us with our bags and took charge of us. He was wearing a blue skin-tight rash vest with a San Blas tour logo, an outfit designed to be visible in a sea of tourists. Felix was a point of calm amidst the chaos, and he inspired confidence. He looked as if only he could see what was going on here. He waved the driver off and directed us to a shaded area with some benches. After a quick chat in confident English, he directed the Germans toward another staging area closer to the jetties. We shared an abrupt farewell, and then they were swallowed by the crowd. Felix turned to me.

"Welcome! What was your name? How many days?"

"Thanks! My name is Aaron Jarvis. I have booked two weeks on Malvadub.”

"Ah, yes, that's right. That’s a long visit. We will be your hosts. Have you been here before?"

"No. First timer. I'm here to write a travel piece for a national newspaper in the UK."

I answered in Spanish at this point. It was important to be honest about my purpose, or I would look a bit weird. Most visits were for one or two days for reasons that would become apparent once we reached the island. Felix quickly calculated this new information, including whether I had understood his earlier chat with the driver. He asked me for the cash we were told to bring. People here paid for everything in cash.

His eyes widened in recognition as he counted the notes I'd handed over. He did so expertly and folded them into his leather bum-bag.

“That all sounds very exciting. Hopefully, what you write will bring more tourists.”

He attached a bright green band to my wrist, something between a hospital and a festival tag. I noticed a tooth dangling from a leather cord around his neck. It may have been one of his own for all I knew.

“Wait here, please."

And then he was gone.

I picked him out in the crowd, conducting travellers and beaming instructions. I perched on a bench among my bags. The waiting area of tree branches and corrugated iron was filling with people. It was getting hotter and there was irritation in the air. Parents got snappy with their kids and silent couples toyed with their vats of drinking water and mega sized bags of wheat snacks.

Different languages and dress codes made for a diverting game of “guess the nationality.” Lots of Americans, paler Europeans of all persuasions, with interesting tattoos and a host of Latin folk from all over the continent. Their accents subtly different.

I knew I screamed Brit. Smeared sunscreen, cut-off denim shorts, and a faded, baggy Stone Roses T-shirt that used to cover a significant spare tyre. I didn't mind any assumptions others might make if they were playing the same game. I was happy in my own skin, excited about the trip, glad to be alive and heading into an adventure.

The divorce had been drawn-out, horrible, and emotionally draining. Twenty years of life dismissed in cold bureaucracy and a flourish of papers. I missed my son, who had supported his mother through the turmoil of dealing with his mad, bad missing dad. Sam had been old enough to understand the betrayals and judged me accordingly. A justified position that showed his judgement and strength of character. I’m kind of proud of him for that, really. Had we been through the mess a little sooner, there would have been access rights and he’d have needed me more. He’d just turned seventeen, and I hadn’t seen or heard from him in months. Guilt and regret, twin Dickensian spectres visited me nightly to exact karmic revenge.

Parents are just ordinary, imperfect humans too, and I hoped he would grow up to understand that. Ironically, I’d only just made the same journey with my own parents. I'm less judgy now and feel closer to them than ever. Hopefully, it wouldn’t take Sam thirty years to make the same trip.