The light went on in the cyber and I was the first to enter. I wanted to do what I had planned to do, upload three more posts onto the site. I did not have the time to complete my task; the unbelievable happened again, the server had a blackout. Today I was kind of relieved and it did not bother me anymore. I packed my stuff and very politely said good bye for the last time to my girlfriend from the cyber.

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I drove to Puerto Cabello and straight to the castle Forte Solano. I had seen the sign board for the exit to the castle last time and it was simply an exit off the main motorway and then up into the hills. The location for a castle had to be strategic with open and distant views over the city and to the sea. It was already lunchtime when I parked the car at the entrance to the castle. I had a cold orange juice before I walked the final five hundred meters up to the castle.

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I was a nice day with a blue, clear sky and with distant views. I had the castle for myself, no staff and no visitors. I could see very well where I had been two days before, the historical center and the other fortress of the city at the entrance to the port. The fortress was today within the military naval complex and not open for visitors. I could see very well the whole port area with the section for the containers and the section where the petrol was filled up.

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The afternoon I wanted to spend in the small village of San Esteban, the beginning of the ancient path of the Spaniards which connected Puerto Cabello with Maracay and was through the steep and very hilly mountains, only about thirty kilometers instead of approximately one hundred kilometer through the smoother valley where the motorway is running today. I just had to turn right at the exit and follow the road to the end.

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At the entrance of the village I stopped quickly at the old recreation residence of a Danish merchant which was set in a subtropical garden. I had left the coast five minutes earlier and the nature along the coast including Puerto Cabello was more of an arid desert and suddenly I was again in kind of a jungle. I continued and had to stop at a military post. The military had stopped bothering me with extensive searches of the car and have become actually quite curious about the license plates and me. Today I met a very nice sergeant who was looking for a conversation. The justification for this military post was probably the birth place of a general of the independence war just opposite the office. The sergeant guided me through the house and was a bit sad that he could not guide me on the path of the Spaniards all the way to Maracay. He would have, but I could not.

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I drove to the end of the village and had to practice walking on the path at least a little bit. I seriously needed practice for Mount Roraima. A barefooted and topless guide offered to walk with me for a while and put me on the right track. We passed the house of a Swiss immigrant who had arrived here about ten years ago and arrived at a stone wall with prehistoric stone carvings. I did not know about this, but was extremely happy about this unexpected but necessary surprise and my personal curiosity for history was satisfied.

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