We had enjoyed ourselves at Playa Chiquita and Mimi had made some plans for us to return there for my birthday. She knew Sonia's schedule. But we had another night before Sonia was returning, so we climbed up Cerro Azul. This is very close to Panama City, just up from some place called December 24. You gain elevation immediately and pass chicken house after chicken house, which I found odd. We passed a point where you should have 4-wheel drive, and we proceeded cautiously with our Kia Picanto. There were times when I had to get a run at the hills. We stopped up at a peak area and took photos and soldiered on until we came across a sign that read "Greek Taberna." We parked the car and walked up and were greeted by the normal guard dogs and there were 3 men there. One spoke English with us. I asked him if the place was really an establishment and he assured us it was and offered Mimi some lemonade. What didn't fit in her cup, he added a shot of vodka to and gave to me.

This was Frank, retired USMC and retired from a financial/insurance career in Florida as well. He wanted to hear what we had been up to, then he stopped me and told me he wanted to translate to his two friends. They listened and smiled and he told me, "I just told them that you said they both look like assholes." So I knew immediately that I would be friends with Frank. He was cooking up some cracklings on a fire in his smoke house and wanted us to try them. I got out my peanuts and olives and warm beer and he took my warm beer and traded me cold beer for it. We visited with him for a while, then took a walk further down the road, which soon was really four-wheel drive only.

We got down to Anita's place, which I think I have posted photos of. She was a nice looking, kind woman who had a few guest houses and a pool and a restaurant down in a valley. If you can read her telephone number, you can call her and stay down there. There is plenty of water down there. Frank told me her name. She is single and Frank walks down there and has breakfast with her sometimes, so he says. Probably brings her some cracklings too. She has a bunch of guard dogs as well, including a white German Shepherd which tried to follow us back. There is a creek which you have to cross to get in and out. It was deliciously cool.

Back at Franks, he wanted us to eat with him, so he brought us some rice with chicken and he had smoked the whole dish. It was great. He knew about smoked eggplant and some Turkish words. He had a Greek father and Panamanian mother. He told us we could stay in the house for $30 or in the cabana for $10 and warned us it would get cold. He also introduced me a sort of Raki from Colombia, which is good. We set up our tent in the cabana, which had about half the windows in. We put the fly on the tent, but were on concrete, so we couldn't stake down our vestibules. The wind picked up to maybe 60 mph that evening and it was noisy! Mimi had on some pants. I had no pants. We both put our bath towels on us as blankets and then we put our tablecloth over us as a blanket. We both had our airplane pullovers on and double t-shirts under those. I had my wool socks on, and we cuddled that night.

It was cloudy in the morning, or foggy. Frank explained that the people from Panama City get really scared up there. We had seen the lights, the Pacific coast, and the islands the night before. I told Frank that it was strange there were so many chicken houses on the way up there because it was such valuable real estate and he told me it was the chicken company that had built the road and developed the area. Frank lives in Florida as well, and is able to work as a real estate guy in Panama and when I told him we would be going to the Pacific coast, he told me to stay in his place there for $20/night and wrote us out 2 pages of instructions on how to find the place, all hinging on finding Maria Gonzalez in Pocri. When I saw this, I knew I had to accept his challenge, but first back to Playa Chiquita.

After coffee, Frank drummed us out of there, with his bongo drums hanging from his neck, singing, "It's so hard to say good-bye."

We motored back to Playa Chiquita, buying a $2 bottle of propane for $17 along the way as we passed through Portobelo. Sonia was two hours behind us and Joseph let us in the house and I started cooking some dirty rice for supper. That must have been my birthday, as Sonia showed up and started cooking some shrimp with squid rings in garlic. Things got a little fuzzy, as I had picked up a bottle of Raki in Portobelo as well, but I remember Sonia pouring a liter of cream into the pot and that was a very tasty meal over pasta, followed by some chocolate cake. Sonia had rented a new Toyota pickup with a 2.4 liter turbodiesel motor in order to transport workers. We stayed there a few days, then Mimi and Sonia schwindeled me into staying another night and the next day they tried again and I had to put my foot down and it made for an awkward departure.

We dropped off some workers each day, who were hacking a path up a few rivers so that some land surveyors could travel up them easier. The land dispute hinged on the location of the rivers. We also explored the coastline again, and ended up crashing the hippie fest with Sonia and Commando. We had picked up a couple of girls from California who were leaving the hippie fest and they looked pretty strung out. The word was that it was a 3 week festival with the last week being adult only. It costed $300 to get in, and there was a tent city of 300 tents rumored to be down at the beach. There were three check-points in place to get down to the beach. We circumvented the normal route and took a sort of "field entrance" down to pay a man some money, then we went exploring and came upon the hippie fest. Lots of young people from all over, some drugs and some genitalia. We didn't take any photographs, but I ran into one of the German gals from Isla Grande, specifically the one with the longer legs, Stefani from Berlin. We saw one of the tent cities. I consider myself an expert in the field of counting tents and there were 500 of them there. If you are interested in a hippie fest, look for it by googling Playa Chiquita cultural gathering.

We looked for our lobsters again, but I scared them all off when they lost their antennae. Sonia brought her yellow lab, Bruno, this time, and I taught him to swim or at least swam with him. We started in the lagoon, but Sonia came out of the house and shooed us out of there because a crocodile had been there years ago or some such nonsense. That was Bruno's first time swimming. We had a nice time staying there and a lot of drama when we departed. You can find it on the iOverlander site. And remember, the road is supposed to be built to Santa Isabel sometime, which will put you within striking distance to San Blas with a boat.