When sailboats leaving Martinique or Guadeloupe for the Panama Canal choose the southern Caribbean sea route,
they see the windward islands drift past one by one.
St. Lucia, St. Vincent, the Grenadines, Grenada.
We visit them on board banana split on a previous trip.
Before sailing off to explore some of its most quiet spots,
aboard Telume, a catamaran which belongs to a German ocean collage,
who has long sailed these waters and veiling lost rockets to travelers from Europe.
The trade winds blow constantly across the anchorages of the archipelago,
and the catamaran's wind generator usually produces enough energy for all the electrical needs about Telume.
Among the islands before us, we have chosen to stop overnight at the Isle of Sarki
for its abundant population of pelicans which swirled against the backdrop of a tiny fishing hamlet.
Apart from miles of breathtaking beautiful beaches,
the Twin Adults of Las Avas, a short distance to the west of lost rockets,
are home to a remarkable natural phenomenon,
one of the tallest mangrove swamps with the highest mangrove trees on the planet.
This maze of islets, covered with lush vegetation, is home to a huge colony of boobies.
There are nests huddled in among the mangroves,
where the chicks spend their first year pursing on branches,
which they eventually strip off their leaves.
For the last leg of our cruise on the ocean's mahogany catamaran,
we've set sail for the nearby island of Bonaire,
which, like St. Martin's Saba, Stacha and Curacao, is part of the Dutch Antilles.
They say here that Bonaire is the Caribbean of 30 years ago,
before the onset of mass tourism.
There's some truth in this, and time does seem to pass a little more slowly here,
among the brightly cuddled houses of the small town of Crandesk than elsewhere.
In the capital of the Dutch Antilles, Willemstad on the island of Curacao,
people tell an amusing tale.
Years ago, one of the island's governors used to suffer from repeated headaches,
and he blamed them on the dazzling white facades of the island's houses.
So he decreed that houses could be painted any color, except white.
The inhabitants of Curacao took this opportunity to give free rein to their taste for bright colors,
and the sea front at Funda today gleams with extraordinary use.
Most sailors avoid the ill-reputed Colombian coast.
For myself among the Colombian islands, I prefer small, out-of-the-way providencia.
Towards the anchorage, on the shore of the isle of Santa Catalina,
this rock goes by the name of Morgan's Head,
and overlooking the village this mountain split into is said to be the backside of the famous pirate.
I'm taking you to a group of islands the like of which I thought could no longer exist.
The Samblas Islands, of the coast of Panama, are the exclusive domain of the Kuna Indians.
The archipelago is composed of a few inhabited islands and 350 deserted islands like this one,
usually the first to be visited by passing sailors in Cayo Solandes.
The water is so clear that sailors have crescent in the anchorage, the swimming pool,
the ones close to the coast where the Kuna Indians live, are rather overpopulated.
And if the village seems calm when you drop your anchor before the island of Makina,
you won't wait long before being approached by molar merchants in their dugouts.
Happy children welcome visitors to the little village.
We're here for a supermarket or even the simplest of shops,
applique an embroidery which are famous throughout the world
and rightly take their place in ethnographic museums worldwide.
If you don't have your own boat, the best way to visit the Samblas
is to embark on one of the very rare sailboats available for charter in the archipelago,
like Taifu or the Catamaran Pepita.
They will sail you to islands of unequal beauty such as Cuanido.
On this islet a hundred feet across stands the prettiest, almost the only hotel in the Samblas.
They generally stop over for a while before heading for the entrance to the Panama Canal.
Whilst waiting for their turn to go through the canal in the Cristobal Yacht Club,
they can get the boat ready for future crossings.
When the great day comes, the pilot boards and invites you to follow the big ship,
your traveling companions through the locks, and get in behind it in the first lock going up.
The lock gate is closed, we are tied down at all four corners,
and the water of Gatun Lake is beginning to fill the lock.
A chief danger going up is whirlpools.
Gauguin was dreaming not of Tahiti nor the Marquesas, but of this little island.
He began here his journey to the South Seas, and it's here that our voyage comes to an end
at the gates of the Pacific, half the amazing town of Panama.
In fact, our journey is not really over yet.
We have it is true left behind us the Caribbean,
but such an extraordinary archipelago stands on our path,
that I would like to offer you as a bonus to go up on a giant to this handful of islands
that seem to belong to another planet.
