Yesterday was one of those days that makes you step back and say, "I can NOT WAIT for the new system!" The Kingdom Hall was a 12 minute walk from our apartment, and the sun was already beating down pretty hard by the time we got there at 9:15. There was a pretty big crowd and the Hall filled quickly, so I was preparing to drown in a pool of my own sweat before the Watchtower study started. Happily, while there wasn't any AC, there were ten fans running all the time and it never got all that hot inside. Plus the only brother that needed to wear a jacket was the one on the platform, and he got a special fan all to himself. Awkward sweat stains averted! The speaker was a visiting brother from Australia and when he started his talk it felt instantly wrong. Not because of what he talked about but how he said it. The language of the congregation is English creole (I never knew there was such a thing). We could understand pretty much 100% of it because very few unknown words were used. It was mostly just a much simpler form of what we use everyday and the word "us" was invariably replaced by the word "we". Children was "pickney" and little was "lickey". It was a lot of fun to listen to and we were even tempted to comment using it (we all lost our nerve though and commented in boring old regular English). We had a great time talking to the friends after the meeting and they invited us to lunch at a nearby restaurant where the plate of the day was always $4. We were all over it! When we got there (the sun was REALLY beating down by now) we put every single table in the restaurant together so we could all talk and get to know each other. At least 20 of us were there, and we got to learn how some of these brothers and sisters wound up in Panama from the US or Canada. Many of them were about to take a boat to a nearby island for a second meeting with another group of locals in a rented school building. It sounded like a lot of fun but when we realized they would be speaking a more involved creole that we wouldn't understand and that it was our last day in Bocas we opted to hit a beach one last time. Before we left one of the elders invited us over to his house for music night with some friends, which worked out perfectly. We'd have time to lay on the beach, make it back to change, and I could finally stop shaking from guitar withdrawal :) With the weather holding and the sun waning we hired a boat to Red Frog Beach. It wasn't all that far, but the boat driver tried to scam us when he dropped us off by saying the price he gave us was PER PERSON. Not! I had read about this before hand so I was careful to clarify before we left that the price was for all four of us. I told him that and we got off the boat, ignoring his accusations and walking away. He left in a huff, and I wondered to myself how often tourists fall for that or just pay more to avoid arguing. It must happen a lot or he wouldn't try it! The walk to the beach was interesting and cool with a stiff breeze from the rolling waves. We even spotted some outstandingly beautiful birds on the way. It's called Red Frog Beach because the area used to be crawling with little red poison dart frogs. That is, until the local kids figured out that dumb tourists would pay them for pictures with the frogs and they were hunted down to be kept in jars. Ironically, we saw no red frogs on Red Frog Beach :( It was a really beautiful area but the crowd there was a little more "adventurous" than we would have liked. Several women thought it was clothing optional (the wives just LOVED that haha) and at least one man wore a g-string (without realizing that everyone he walked past laughed at him afterwards). I'm glad we went but it wasn't a highlight like Zapatilla was. After an hour or two of laying on the sand a passing rain shower got us up and back to the boats for our trip back. We had just enough time to shower off, buy some chips and salsa to bring to the gathering, get a couple of outrageously good drinks at happy hour, and set out in search of the brother's house. There are no house numbers and even street names are hard to spot. We just knew the general area and that his house was green. Plenty of information to go on, right? Fortunately he came out to meet us and led the way. He has a very simple little place right on the water, and when he told Joe he pays $250 per moth all inclusive, the wheels started spinning. Sorry, Kim, it looks like you might be a permanent resident :) At least ten more friends trickled in with various instruments, and I finally got to cradle a guitar in my arms...it had been far too long! One of the brothers was a really talented musician and he kind of led everyone with the songs to play. We had popcorn and snacks, played music, and laughed as the dog next door howled with perfect timing as we sang "in the jungle, the mighty jungle, the lion sleeps tonight". Kim rocked out on the tambourine and I saw a rat the size of a cat run across the dock. Talk about fun (and different)! We finished on a high note (no pun intended, my goodness I'm funny!) with the three new kingdom songs and meandered back to our apartment, knowing that, for a couple of hours at least, we were in the paradise. The city on the walk back was dark and gritty but we never felt unsafe, which was pleasantly surprising. You get a really small-town vibe here, like everybody knows everybody. If somebody robbed you it'd be pretty likely that it's somebody you already met. Just pick him out of the line; you might even know his name! In other words, crime never felt like an issue. We visited our favorite bar one last time for a farewell and dinner. The mojitos here are fantastic! They actually have flavor and aren't just soda water with a sprig of mint sitting on top. I got some excellent seafood soup (complete with shrimp heads and large chunks of octopus) and Brittany went the health-conscious route with a brownie and ice-cream. I'm smiling and shaking my head just thinking about it; the girl knows what she wants! By the time dinner was over we all agreed that we loved Bocas but were ready to move on and see something different. We definitely did that today! We spent the morning cleaning up the apartment and rushed to our boat for the journey to Boquete. "Be here at 10:45 or we'll give your spot away" I was emphatically told. We power-walked there to arrive right on time, only to sit for half an hour. Oh Latin America, how you drive me nuts. The whole trip was supposed to take 3.5 hours, but between the boat ride to the mainland and the super cramped/painfully slow bus we didn't land in Boquete until 5 hours later. It's hard to complain though because the bus ride was pretty unforgettable. We spent about an hour in cloud forest. The fog was so dense in some places that I could only see a flat white sheet in front of the windshield and I wondered how the driver could see the lines on the road (before quickly trying to thing of something, anything, else). Other parts of the mountains were covered in such thick fog that it looked as if the entire thing was on fire and smoke was billowing from the trees. In about half an hour the landscape changed dramatically and we found ourselves in desert-like lowlands. Everything was brown and the sky was such a clear vivid blue that we could see for miles in every direction. I wish I could've taken more pictures there but it was ************* a bouncing bus through a dirty, grime-drenched window. We're staying at Mamallena in Boquete, which is kind of cool because we stayed there in Colombia too. They had all of our rooms ready to go and we dropped our stuff off before heading out to explore. It's another small town but there's a volcano in view and dark rain-filled clouds always loom in the distance. Hunting for cheap tours, we walked all around the city and found some big beautiful houses complete with waterfalls and botanical gardens. Some expats have it really good here! We booked a full day hike on the Quetzal Trail tomorrow (google that name, it's an absolutely gorgeous and very rare kind of bird). We're hoping to see sloths and toucans. We also booked a tour to a national marine park for the following day, so we're hoping the weather holds for one last amazing day on the beach. A guy at the hostel tipped us off to a super simple and cheap restaurant for dinner, and all four of us wound up with huge plates of food for a grand total of $12. Cool beans! A few cheap meals will help make up for all the overages during happy hour :) On the way back from dinner we passed a little produce shop where I bought a pineapple for one dollar that smelled like a Yankee Candle. I couldn't stop smelling it, it was amazing! As soon as we got back to the hostel I jumped in the kitchen and cut it up. It tasted just as good as it smelled and the four of us downed it greedily. After that we were all pretty worn out so we're just hanging out in our rooms, reading and getting ready to sleep. It's a little hard to do because the very loud crowd here is blasting AC/DC and showing no signs of slowing down any time soon. That's no problem for me but Brittany is warning that our days in hostels are numbered... I've got pretty much all of our time here figured out but I still have to nail down our overnight bus into Panama City. That's going to be a little more complicated than I thought, but I'm sure it will work out fine. Probably. Maybe? Tomorrow is our jungle hike. Let's see some sloths!!!