The Trail Less Traveled

"When Fabio and I first met, I was on vacation and he was at work. I was en route to Kuna Yala, an autonomous indigenous zone on the Caribbean coast of Panama, on a solo trip. As it happened, he was captaining a charter boat there, which offered an affordable way to cruise Kuna Yala. We met in the dark at 5:30am in Panama City waiting for the bus out to the jump-off point for the boat.We spent just a few days sailing together on that trip, with a motley crew of travelers, American ex-pats, a Panamanian party animal named Jorge (pronounced Jor-HEEEEEEY!) and the Kuna first mate Dino, but by the time I returned to NYC, I was already thinking to myself, “This Fabio guy has it figured out.”I wrote to him as soon as I got home, and he replied with an offer to sail together again, someday. So began a long, strange correspondence between an urban planner fully immersed in NYC-living and a former psychologist now sailing boats in a remote locale, clinging to the mast for a whiff of cell phone reception.Fast forward t