So Margot and I are visiting Panama for a week in February, and we are staying with the Kuna Indigenous folks of the San Blas Islands. These people have been virtually independent from Panama since 1925, and they run their own province of the country (Kuna Yala) which includes over three hundred islands off the north coast in the Caribbean Sea. One of those islands is Akwadup (which means, in their language, "island", and that seems to be appropriate), and we are staying at a "resort" there. The "resort" takes up the entire island, and there are only three other guests sharing the place with us. I say "resort" because it is pretty much bare bones and basic. It is not luxurious by any stretch of the imagination, but it is clean and the food is decent and the people who own and run it are wonderful, and we have an entire Caribbean island almost to ourselves. For an extra dollar Juan will take you in the motorboat to yet another, smaller island where the beaches are nicer and the swimming is better. So Margot and I decide that the price is right and we fork over our dollar (U.S.) and we head over there with the other guests. Margot is wearing her bathing suit and I am packing a recent copy of The New Yorker. One of the other guests is a woman from Chicago who teaches Spanish for a living. For some reason she is under the mistaken impression that I also speak Spanish. Margot heads out to sea as soon as we arrive and I find a nice shady palm tree. Events seem to be unfolding as they should.
About one hour later my reading is disturbed by the lady from Chicago. She seems to be quite excited and she is telling me something, but she is speaking Spanish. I smile and I nod. I give her an "okay" sign with my hand. I say gracias, and I return to my magazine. What could possibly be so important that she should interrupt my precious reading time? She is American, I remind myself, and they all have a funny way of operating in the world sometimes.
I find out later that Margot needed to be rescued at sea. There was quite a strong current running along the coast that no one had told her about. She had gone out quite far (as is her wont) but soon noticed that she was swimming hard and getting nowhere versus the nearby islands. She was actually getting tired and she could not get back to land. Fortunately Juan was nearby, and he was wearing flippers. He tried helping her but had to resort to calling for the motorboat to come out to get them. Our fellow guest of the Illinois persuasion had been watching this and had decided that I needed to know that my wife had nearly been swept out to sea: to be eaten by sharks, certainly, or perhaps captured by pirates. She told me this in Spanish. And my response had been to smile, and to flash the "okay" sign at her, and then go back to my magazine. At dinner that evening she was a little bit frosty towards me.
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