The Carti Islands are a small group of islands that are among the busiest and most densely populated islands in San Blas. There are four islands that make up the Carti Island chain: Tupile, Yandup, Sugdup, and Muladup.
While staying at the Eastern Lemon Cays, you can almost make out Carti and the mainland. Usually it’s hard to see with the clouds, rain, and weather. It is a 9-mile sail from the E. Lemon Cays to Carti (too far for the dinghy) but too close to put any amount of canvas up. Especially being that we had less than 5 knots of wind.
It was a beautiful day, the sun was shining, the water was smooth as glass, and the trip was short. From the distance of a few miles, you could see Carti Tupile and Carti Sugdup.
The first island you see is Carti Tupile on our approach to the island chain. We visited this island and did a quick walk around, but did not buy anything.
Carti Tupile Island
Carti Sugdup, is such a fun name. Sugar Shack was on Sugdup! This is a busy little island specializing in the sale of Guna Handcrafts and molas. They also have a make shift panga fueling station, very similar to a U.S. gas station on water. Many kids were running up and down and over this structure giggling along as they played. We were not certain where to park the dinghy so we selected a spot off to the side of the fueling station.
Carti Sugdup Island
Carti Muladup is the last island in the chain and is overflowing with huts and a large structure on the eastern side featuring a red roof. We did not make it ashore to this island
Carti Muladup Island.
As we advanced on the anchorage, the water turned to a ghoulish brown making us happy that we were not running the watermaker. We dropped the anchor and made our way to Carti Sugdup.
A small dirt path led to a semi closed gate that took you between two huts. We were not certain this was the “walkway”, but we proceeded onward. As it turned out, this is a road.
Matt on a street on Carti Sugdup
We came to a local market which was inside a man’s home. The owner added shelves for his products along the walls between his hammock (bed) and personal belongings. He was very friendly, spoke to us in Spanish and offered us bread for the next day. To our amazement, he had an uber fancy professional stand mixer which stood out like a sore thumb among his other belongings. We continued exploring, trying to keep track of landmarks as there were no signs to tell us how to get back to the dock. You sort of weave in and out of communities of huts, hoping you don’t intrude on their personal space. Many have no doors or windows and you just sort of look in as you pass by as they are almost always trying to sell something.
During our discovery, we passed by a small cafeteria and a beautiful nativity set.
Carti Sugdup Cafe
Life size nativity set in the center of the island.
We also met this really nice older gentleman who was working on wood carvings. He was so nice, but was very hard to understand as he only had a few teeth, spoke softly, and in Spanish. We caught every 4th or 5th word. But he was so very nice and invited us to his home to see his work.
Sweet Kuna man carving wood
We found our way back to the dinghy and set out for Carti Yandup. The Bauhaus guide book mentioned a “store” on Carti Yandup, so we headed there next. We were doing ok on general provisions, but we were out of bread and almost out of fresh fruit and vegetables.
Stepping onto Yandup, we were greeted with a few concrete buildings with green grass and a raked dirt path. The concrete buildings were a stark contrast to the huts made out of bamboo and palm fronds. We meandered our way through the village, peeking in a few huts and smiling. We determined we were both too shy to actually go into people’s homes to see what they had for sell. Our loss as we later found out.
BUMMER: Leaving Carti:
- Didn’t find the market
- No trash area
- Kuna Museum closed
Feeling a little discouraged, we departed the Carti islands without any provisions and proceeded to Gun Boat Island for the night.
