There I was in the Swimming Pool. It’s not really a swimming pool – just the anchorage to the south of Banedup Island in the San Blas of Panama.

The Swimming Pool is so completely surrounded by coral reefs and islands covered in coconut palms that there is hardly a ripple. Also, there’s a nice little bar too, with swings instead of seats and absolutely the best Piña Coladas. You can take them to drink at a table under a thatched sunshade knee-deep in the water.

But I couldn’t stay there – not on the 100^th anniversary of the Guna revolution.

The Guna are the indigenous people of this region. They’ve been here for 500 years – and they continue to live just as they always have. You might find a village on an island so crowded that there’s hardly room to walk between the wattle houses – or maybe just one family in one hut on an island you can walk round in 15 minutes.

They live by fishing and collecting coconuts and selling intricately-sewn “Molas” to the cruising community who sail through here on their way to the Panama Canal.

They are delightful, smiling people who paddle their dugout canoes as they have for centuries – fishermen who come alongside in remote anchorages offering the Caribbean Spiny Lobster (like the European one but with no claws). At the more populated islands, whole families will come out selling molas and Guna courtesy flags. The flag takes some getting used to – it’s a Swastika, but they had it first when it was still respectable.

And they do love a party. Everybody agreed: The 100^th anniversary of the revolution was going to be the party of the century. After hundreds of years of  oppression – first by the Spanish Inquisition, then by the Panamanian government, they finally won their independence in 1925.

So, where to go for for the anniversary, that was the question.

The San Blas Cruisers WhatsApp group was divided between Carti Island and Tigre Island. I plumped for Carti because there was talk of fermented sugar cane. I spent a day sailing down there with the wind behind me, only to find no other boats and the island so crowded I couldn’t imagine there was space for even the tiniest re-enactment – let alone the sort of Bacchanalia you might expect from sugar cane hooch. I stayed a day, walked around the place until I realised I had wished “Buenas Dias” three times to the same old man sitting outside his door. I moved on.

I had to sail upwind and then downwind (to avoid a bunch of other islands apparently not in the party mood) but Tigre was the place to be – there must have been 20 boats anchored there – particularly families with young children (how many school trips feature re-enactments of beheadings and dismemberments?)

The celebrations went on for five days, with dancing and fireworks, kite-flying, more re-enactments (the Panamanian soldiers had wooden guns – the Guna, wooden machetes and wooden axes).

But the big event was the Congresso. This was an extended version of the regular gathering in the village hall when the business of the village is discussed and the elders sit on hammocks and chant the songs and histories of the people – which in turn get translated from the ancient tongue by the not-quite-so-old elders. As you might imagine, this can go on a bit, so certain villagers are delegated to shriek periodically to keep everyone awake (Did I say this was an enlightened civilization?)

Something else that is really good about Tigre is how clean and tidy they keep the island. While some others are ankle-deep in plastic, here every house has its wastebin – a wastebin cleverly constructed out of plastic bottles. They even use plastic bottles as shades for the solar-powered streetlamps.

I would have stayed longer but without warning (and ten days late) UPS found my new dinghy and delivered it to the duty-free zone in Colón. Suddenly getting back to the marina at Linton Bay seemed more important than a hundred years of Guna independence.

It’s taking two days because the wind died on the first afternoon and I found myself an island with a protective reef to anchor behind for the night. It was only the next day as the wind began to fill in from the north and I thought about pushing on that I realised the island was not deserted after all. There were two huts – one at each end. I like to think there were two families, each minding their own business, living their simple, charmed lives of lobsters and coconuts, sewing molas and singing.

I wonder whether just on this one special day, they got together for a party?

A typical island in the San Blas (there are said to be 365 of them)

Recycled recycling

Molas

The Congresso

Re-enactment

The Swimming Pool