There was no fishing today, since no one would be at the lodge either this afternoon or on Sunday.  Everyone got up at a leisurely pace, ate some breakfast (with lots of bees today, sadly), and then went back to their rooms to pack.  Knowing how everything would be jammed into the plane, we were particularly cognizant of how we packed our bags, putting the computer in the very middle of the bag, surrounded by clothes and other soft stuff.  Once we were all packed, we just headed back to the lounge area and chilled until 10, when we were slated to head out.

The water had been calm all morning, but just 30 minutes before we were set to depart the wind came up from the east, pushing waves right into the bay and the shore.  This caused a further delay, because rather than Rafa take us to the town and then head back to get the staff later in the day, we were all going to go at once before the swells got worse.  Of course, this meant in the short term they did get worse, so when we finally left, the boat was bumping quite a bit.  There were no good seats on the boat, with the back seats being gentler but getting much more wet, and the front being dry but bouncing up and down a ton.  Several people seemed unhappy with the situation; we were more realistic about it – there was nothing anyone could do.

At the pier in town we arrived at that small restaurant and bar where we’d used the facilities and gotten water a few days earlier.  We did the same today, cognizant not to drink too much before getting on the plane headed back to San Diego.  At the “airport” the military presence was much bigger than a few days prior, with the military having a large tent set up, a big satellite dish, and even a drone they were bringing back from the airstrip to their tent area.  We still had no clue what was going on around town (or, we suppose, somewhere near town), but this was a fairly sizeable operation.  Gray relayed to us secondhand that people in town were happy the military was there, and whatever they were doing, their presence had made the townspeople more at ease.

It was scorching hot as we were waiting to get on the plane, and the plane itself was really hot after baking in the sun for several days.  Gray quickly got us up to about 6500 feet, and up there it was more comfortable.  Most everyone, including the two of us, slept for most of the flight to San Felipe.  In San Felipe, we went through immigration again, with the guy remembering our names from 5 days prior.  He was the cheeriest immigration agent we’d ever met on our travels.  The flight back to San Diego from San Felipe was fine, and a little cooler, particularly the closer we got to the Pacific coast.  Crystal was awake the whole time, Justin for most of the time.

Coming in to land we flew almost perpendicular over the Tijuana airport, then banked left to land at Brown Field.  From the air, there was no distinguishing markings to indicate where the border was, and everything blended together.  We could hear over the headphones the instructions from the Brown Field controller telling us which runway to land on, and then to park in a designated border/customs area bounded by a blue box, and for no one to leave the blue box until after border agents met with everyone.  The two border agents were of Japanese and Hispanic descent, and we thought that had some nice symbolism.  California at the very least continues to be a nice “melting pot.”  Back in the lobby of the airport we dropped our stuff, and Crystal, Cynthia and Deanna went with Gray to get cars and t-shirts.  Justin and Claudia waited and chatted a bit about the upcoming week. 

Cynthia didn’t have a cellular plan on her phone, just wireless, so we agreed to take her with us to our place, where she hailed an Uber and went to visit her sister in La Jolla.  Going through National City, we marveled at how many cars there were after seeing basically none in Bahia.  We imagined what it would be like for someone to leave Bahia for the first time to visit Tijuana and San Diego, and what their reaction would be to seeing so many people and so many cars in one spot.  As we were discussing this, we came upon an accident that had just happened; as we got to the accident site as people were still getting out of their cars and clearing debris off the road.  It looked pretty bad, but it looked like no one was seriously injured.  We were back at our place by around 3pm or so, said our goodbyes to Cynthia, and then had our own happy hour at our place.