We leave the river and continue along the coast, stopping off at islands and poking around. Romerio asks me about where I live and I say that the people are very wonderful, but they have funny habits. I tell him that everyone pays to exercise in a small room with lots of other people. I tell him about the Atkins diet and the South Beach diet, and how Coke and Pepsi are joining thousands of manufacturers to make new Atkins friendly drinks and food. Romerio is laughing, but I think it's more at me.

In the minutes before twilight, when the water reflects an oily black, we motor south inside the islands. These coconut islands, such fragile places, only exist here because of the weather pattern - no hurricanes. And the layers of coral reef barriers grant this inner water the disposition of a north woods lake. I hear another motor, and out of the darkness I see a boat, a big old rusted metal monster, chugging with a crew hanging along the rails in weariness.

These are the Colombian coconut boats. They come here to barter or buy coconuts from the Kuna in exchange for Colombian oil, gas, clothing, anything the Kuna may need. All those coconuts go to the giant Colombian confectionary market. Coconut candies bound for Bogotá. The boats are also the trading route for Colombian drugs. That's why the American guidebooks warn you about the uninhabited islands here. The jolly coconut boats, with their sinister cargo.

Just north of here, another Peace Corps woman came to teach about coral and lobster. But she gave up her mission to concentrate on the cocaine problem. A Kuna who finds a floating bag of white can become at once rich and curious. For all of Kuna society’s strict social rules, Colombia’s addictions prey on them, like anywhere else.

For five hundred years before cocaine, other evil outside influences haunted the Kuna. In the early sixteenth century, the Darién hinterlands, which the Kuna populated at the time, would have remained an unimportant backwater to the Spanish and their trade routes. Caribbean Panama had one role for the Spanish - namely, it was the point of departure for silver from Peru.