We wanted to see a few islands around us.

However in the early morning hours, only Ste and I were up, a boat with 2 men came. They offered us molas.

A mola is a piece of fabric about a size 40 – 60 cm with very colorful patterns. Some are hand stitched, some are cut out and hands sewed. Motives are most often animals of the sea and the rainforest. The blouses of the guna women have such a mola in front and on the back.

Since I saw the first mola in Shelter Bay Marina, I wanted to have some for the cushion covers in MaRe’s salon. The incredible skillful salesman smelled my desire. Venancio, so his name, showed Ste and me maybe 100 molas he carried in pretty big plastic container in his boat. When putting them back a pre-selection was made.

With this pre-selection under his arm, he asked for permission to come on board. Within a minute to two, he placed the molas in MaRe’s cockpit that it was easy to look at them. Then final selection was made and the price was negotiated. The latter one was a tough. To make it short, i bought 4 molas and Ste bought 3.

Venancio is a natural sales talent!!!

During the day several other boats came to offer the same. Sorry for them but too late. The last boat came around 1600 – 1700 and needs to be mentioned. Two guna women and a child of maybe around 5 years came with a dugout and offered also molas. The wind was already around 4 Bft, wind waves of about 25 cm. It impresses me always when I see how confident they manoeuver with their dugouts. Waves of up to 25 cm and a freeboard of maybe 20 cm. They are really experts of dugouts.

At about noon, we took the tender and drove over to Niadup with the final destination of dog island.

Niadup, a pretty touristic islands with bar, souvenir shops, and cottages, which can be rented. There is also quite a bit day business. Tourist boats with outboard engines bring people over to the island for a few hours of swimming in the warm and clear waters as well as laying around at the beach to get grilled or drinking patterns something in the bar, buying souvenirs.

We had a drink. All drinks are canned. Unfortunately nothing else despite the fact that they could get fresh fruits easily. Convenience is the biggest thread for this globe because it creates so much garbage.

However, i need to say that on none of the islands we were on so far, the was garbage lying around. Guna yala, the land of the guna, is different from Panama and the other areas of the Caribbean I could visit until now.

We finally went over to dog island, which is just 100 m away. Dog island, we could see from Niadup, is even more touristic then Niadup. We strolled over the islands and swam around the shipwreck at the beach. The wreck was once a steel built vessel of maybe 50 to 100 t. Pretty many corals grew there already. What surprised me most was to find two pretty big and filigree fan corals. It seems that a depth of 2 – 3 m is just too deep for the very many tourists swimming around the wreck every day thus they can survive.

When we were about to leave, a man approached us wanting 3 USD per person for being on the island with so many other tourist. Ok, it’s their land and they have the right to charge for going at their land, I just found it unfair that they did not ask at the beginning when we landed at the island.