January 13, 2012
We woke up this morning quite a bit refreshed after a good night's sleep. Our first destination is the East Lemmon Cays. It is only about 6 nm from El Porvenir so we were in no hurry to get underway. Besides that, it is best to enter reef fringed areas with the sun overhead or behind you. All the islands in the San Blas area are reef fringed. It is amazing to watch big 8-10 ft waves breaking over the reefs and then be inside enjoying calm seas and a great Trade Wind breeze.
We dropped anchor at 1330 hrs between Banedup and Nuinudup islands in 30' of water. The ending "dup" in Kuna means island. this blog will have a lot of "dups". Banedup in one of the few islands that has a Kuna restaurant in traditional manner: thatched hut and bamboo. There were several Panamanian Boy Scout type campers in tents on it. We started to explore some of the other islands in the dinghy. The water is wonderfully clear. A few of the islands had single Kuna families on them attending to the coconuts. These used to be the traditional currency used by the Kunas. Every coconut has an owner so it is forbidden to take them. This would cause hard feelings among the Kunas. One can buy them for $1.00 or less and this makes the Kunas very happy. These Indians are very good business people: they understand capitalism and work it quite efficiently. We will stay here several days getting to know how things work from other yachties.
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