The coast of Utopia: Barefoot life at its best

Our early-morning puddle jumper landed on El Porvenir, Kuna Yala's northernmost main island, basically a short airstrip on a spot of white sand. We were met by Hernán Martínez, our guide for the day. About five-foot-seven, barrel-chested, with a round, broad face, Hernán is the color of a mild coffee bean. After hosting us — a group of four — to a heartbreaking breakfast of a hot dog, an egg, white bread, Velveeta, Cremora, and Splenda, he took us to visit the small thatched hut that houses the Kuna Museum. Hernán and his cousin Elias, the curator, explained which fish the Kuna like to eat and what the various shapes embroidered on their famous molas symbolize; they patiently and thoughtfully tried to answer our questions.

Upon leaving the museum, Hernán packed us into his cayuco for a trip to Wailidup, a picture-perfect white-sand-ringed island, where Coral Lodge would fetch us anon. We sat in twos on narrow wood planks, with a boatman in the back nursing a forty-horsepower engine and Hernán standing at the prow watching what was coming. The seas were surprisingly high, and there was a lot of wind. We putt-putted through swells of eight feet, all the climbing and falling producing a more or less constant splashing and spray. At the bottom of the trough, all you could see was a 360-degree perimeter of water. It occurred to me that the flowered plastic tablecloths we had been given for cover were about as much of a life raft as we'd get.

We arrived soaked but without serious incident, although the German girl sitting up front was seasick and had clearly been sobbing. The sun was intense, and we were all exhausted — the journey had started that morning in Panama City at 4:30. Wailidup had a couple of cabins, which had been rented by some Scandinavians, and a café-bar on a platform that provided shade and some lunch.

When all is said and done, the most spectacular aspect of the Atlantic coast of Central America is not the perfect sand beaches, the great music, the delicious fish, or the dignity of intact culture but the extraordinary people I met everywhere I went. The graciousness of the hosts more than made up for the lack of luxuries. Dell Lopez, of Pearl Lagoon, Nicaragua, is such a host, and as such, a national treasure. Miss Dell (among all the English-speaking communities I visited along the coast, ladies are always addressed as Miss), who with her husband has a small inn called the Casa Blanca, picked me up in Bluefields for a whirlwind tour of the lagoon and out to the Pearl Cayes. En route to her boat, we toured the university, grabbed a scrumptious lunch of churrasco near the port, and talked about politics, about education, about tourism, joined by several of Miss Dell's relatives, who are her support team. And this was just the beginning of Dell's inviting me into her life.

It's a dog's life: Lime Caye, one of Nicaragua's 18 tiny Pearl Cayes, is a great place to pause for a while — or to spot endangered hawksbill turtles, which nest on its pristine beaches.

With her son Brady at the helm, we motored up to little La Fe, a settlement of maybe two hundred people on a green lawn at water's edge with no electricity, no running water, no phone. Dell has property here, and we stopped to visit with her sister Sylvia. As we sat on the porch of a small house, a young man pulled out an old guitar and sang a country-western-style song he'd written about the Garinagu; others gathered around, singing harmony. Accompanied by a passel of kids, we collected limes from one of Miss Dell's trees ("The guests like to have them in their drinks," she explained). As we were leaving, Sylvia ran down to the boat to give Dell some cassava bread, the only time I got to taste this traditional Garifuna staple during my travels. We continued on to Orinoco — the Garifuna town founded by Miss Dell's great-great-grandfather and the Miskito woman he married, and Dell's birthplace — where her uncle Frank Lopez told tales of the town's 160-year-old history. We stopped in on an elderly aunt, and a young man performed on the drums.

That night in the Casa Blanca's restaurant, I met an American expatriate who had written off Puerto Viejo as already too developed. Changes are coming here, too. "You're seeing this place just on the cusp," he said, and he told me about a new road linking Pearl Lagoon to the rest of the country. Later, I asked Dell for her thoughts. "You see the cars in town? That's how they got here," she said. I had seen perhaps three. Because of the road, she told me, so many people had come for Holy Week (the high season in Central America) that she had had to turn away potential guests. She intends to have six more rooms with private baths by next Easter; she had already bought the sand to give to the local fellow who will make her bricks.

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The next day was my very favorite on the western shores of the Caribbean. Early in the morning, Miss Dell, Brady, and I headed out to the Pearl Cayes. We passed at least three dozen fishermen, working for their daily catch in their cayucos, and checked in with the coast guard before picking up speed for an hour or so across open sea. Sand Fly Cay (appropriately named) is home to Miss Paula, Dell's half sister whom she grew up with, and only four or five other people. The house is right on the beach, there are some places to sit, and coconut husks burned in the sand. We went fishing while Miss Paula started making us a spicy fish stew called rondon for lunch. The fish mainly ate my bait, but I did catch a small one, which Miss Dell praised as being "a market fish." Stretched out in an old lounge chair on the beach, I enjoyed my rondon, which reminded me of the tapado I had had in Livingston and the hudut that I had never managed to track down in Punta Gorda — fish, coconut, peppers, and green banana.

Before heading back to Pearl Lagoon, Miss Dell took me to see some of the cayes that are at the center of an ownership dispute: Although the islands are all community property, a developer has nonetheless sold a number of them to individual buyers. A couple of the islands have armed guards. But not Grape Cay, a two-and-a-half-acre drop of sand with nothing much on it besides coconut palms. Brady stayed out fiddling with the boat, while Dell and I went ashore. I immediately plopped into the water, which was at the temperature of an enormous personal bath; I discovered the meaning of "happy as a clam." Miss Dell industriously collected fallen coconuts. "Aren't you going to come in?" I called. She piled up her coconuts and made her way over. She plopped too, and there, in about eighteen inches of water, we lay, two middle-aged ladies, basking, occasionally splashing — another hour or so spent together, alone in paradise.

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