This March break, 12 students and two faculty members are traveling to Panama to engage with the complexity of research, communities, and conservation in the unique ecosystems of Panama. Please enjoy the blog post below from Evan ’25 and Tommy ’25 about their journey from Panama City to the San Blas Islands (Guna Yala), where they experienced the small, close-knit communities and learned about the islanders’ way of life.
On the first day, we got to experience real heat for the first time in a while. It was refreshing to feel the warmth of the tropics after being on the chilly campus all winter. The sights we saw in Panama City were very different as well. Panama City had so many bright lights and tall buildings situated along the coast of the Pacific Ocean. When we departed the city on our way to Guna Yala, we were able to experience some of the differences between the urban and rural landscapes. The most notable differences being the agriculture and the closeness of the communities we observed. Then, after a few hours of twisting through the mountainous region, we arrived at the pier in time to board out boats to bring us out to the San Blas Islands, our home for the next few nights.
It is hard to explain what it is like on that boat traveling to the San Blas Island where we will be staying. The whole experience felt like it was right out of a movie scene… our boat was moving through the chop of the ocean while passing a different deserted Island every 30 seconds. The Islands were tiny, spanning from ones with only enough space for a couple of palm trees to ones with space to hold a small community of people, much like the one we are staying on. It is astonishing, and even difficult for us to think about what life would be like growing up here. Only knowing the small community that inhabits your home island. And when we talked to one of the locals, he gave us the impression that the island is everything that you care about. “Our God is our mother, and our mother is our Island” he told us. They have held on to their own language and adapted to the world around them while still maintaining their core values that they have held for centuries. We are very excited to learn more about how this community interacts with the much more modern world of Panama City, as well as what their relationships are like with other communities surrounding them.