Nubesidup aka Gun boat island is one of the tiny islands that is surrounded by a huge horseshoe shaped shallow reef. To get to the anchorage you have to go through a gap in the shallow coral wall. Once you are inside, it gets very deep and there were only a few good spots to anchor.
The island itself is tricky to get to because it is also surrounded by shallow corals. It is a very nice little island. It takes about 2 minutes to walk all around. And there are little huts for tourists and a bar kind of thing.
When we first arrived the manager Marco was busy working with some guys, pouring cement, so dad went to talk to him. Mom and I started talking to the Kuna granny sitting at the kitchen/ bar area. We ended up buying bracelets.
They were teaching us our first Kuna words, which we unfortunately immediately forgot. The manager guy has 4 kids and 13 grandchildren and his mother (who looks ancient) lives on the island. But they don’t own it. A relative of the manager’s wife owns it. His wife works at the hospital and only comes over with some children and grandchildren in the weekends.
Capo tastes crab?
On Exodus we were visited by Kunas in cayucas. Mom allowed herself to be convinced to buy crabs, which we prepared for dinner. Sounds wonderful, but preparing crabs for dinner is a huge ordeal because: you have to boil them alive, then let them cool down, next you start with the hardest part – cracking them and getting the meat out (ugh! What a disgusting job 😵💫).
I am not going to go into details or you might throw up on your screen. That night we had seafood rice with crab meat. And of course, we left some crab meat without spice for Mr. C. Turns out Capo has a knack for falling in love with fishy things. He licked his lips for a long time after finishing his supper.
Reefs
There is wonderful snorkeling here.
We first went to a shallow spot where the coral didn’t look great, but we saw fat lobsters and crabs.
The good snorkeling spots were further out and we went there a couple of times. Mom and I enjoyed the shallower parts of the triangular shaped reef that dropped down several meters in terraces.
Dad was off to the deep end and got back with the catch of the day.
Crab-ville
One afternoon mom and I had a snorkel at the shallow reef close to our anchorage. It was already late afternoon, maybe that is the reason why this seemed like a crab town. It turned out that every coral had at least one fat crab hiding in it. We saw piles and piles of crabs, and were feeling sorry we had paid for the ones from the previous night. It was obvious where those were caught!!!
We also found a very weird looking thing (picture) . To me it looked like a sea cucumber with spikes sticking out of its back, to mom it looked like a type of sea urchin.
Down time
Obviously when the predicted strong winds arrived, we couldn’t go and had a movie and pop corn afternoon instead. Mom busied herself with crocheting small rugs from old Tshirts, to prevent sandy paw prints in our beds.
We stayed a week and then moved to a new DUP. From there on it feels like every week we went up one DUP in pretty much everything.
It took us about 2 and a half hours to get to our next destination: Acuadup.
Blastingly FUN FACTS
Did you know:
- The Kunas are one of the only Indians who are true to their culture.
- In 2025 it will be 100 years since the Kuna revolution.
- The Kuna revolution started because the Kunas wanted to be independent from Panama city and wanted to have their own rules and didn’t want to submit to people who didn’t understand their culture.
- The Americans helped the Kunas in the revolution by sending 3 armed ships because the Kunas didn’t have their own army.
- Gun boat island got its name because during the revolution one of the armed American ships was docked there.
- The word DUP means island in the Kuna language.
