Sunrise on Tuesday, December 13
The taxi picked us up at 1000 from the marina. It took us to the airport, which was on the outskirts of town on the southwest side, about a 20 minutes away from Costa Baja. We drove through downtown La Paz, passed the Walmart at the edge of town, and passed a military base before getting to the tiny airport.
We’d arrived two hours early, which was necessary for US flights. In the US, the security lines were long and slow, and there was no promise you’d make it to the gate without a two-hour pad of time. However, in this airport, we were much earlier than necessary. The airport was empty, with no line for security. Security didn’t require us to remove our shoes, belts, etc, so we went through quickly. We didn’t have to pass through an x-ray machine and none of us were singled out for a pat down.
It was a two-hour flight to Tijuana. The flight was a little delayed, but otherwise uneventful. The first photo is Baja with Isla San Jose in the distance; San Evaristo is on the Baja shore across from the island. The second photo is Bahia Concepcion.
The Tijuana airport was very close to the US/Mexico border. For $30 per person, you could walk through a corridor that let out on the San Diego side of the border. While quite a few people were utilizing the corridor, the line for customs was short and we went through quickly. That may have been the fastest and easiest international crossing we’ve had since 9/11.
We spent three weeks in San Diego. The time went so fast that it was a blur. Unfortunately, we all got sick, and Christi had a hard time getting over it, so we didn’t get to see as many people or do as much as we had wanted to.
While we have enjoyed our time in the Sea of Cortez, we were all very ready to be home with our loved ones. It had been over 5-months since we’d seen any of family or long-time friends, and it had been way too long. On our circumnavigation, we’d had a lot of family and friends come and visit us along the way. At the time, we hadn’t realized how important those visits had been to our emotional well-being.
Our flight back from Tijuana to La Paz was almost as easy as the flight in. The walk through the corridor from San Diego to the airport was easy, with a lot of staff around to help in the spots that could have been confusing. The Tijuana airport was significantly bigger than La Paz, but it’s not a giant airport. Again, we didn’t have to strip down for the security line, go through a x-ray machine, or get patted down. Three of our bags were flagged by security for a hand search. In all three cases, they asked for clarification of the flagged items (cheese, water, and oil filters), and waved us through with no hassles, no confiscating of items, and no bomb testing.
The flight was on time and uneventful. Since the La Paz airport was tiny, we were in line for a taxi within minutes of landing. The taxi system was organized and the ride back to Costa Baja was uneventful. We were relieved to see that Kosmos was still floating!
One of the challenges of being at the fuel dock was that we had no electricity; while we were gone, Kosmos was running solely on solar/wind. Eric had decided to leave our refrigerator/freezer unit running since he was certain that we’d make enough juice to cover its use. When we arrived onboard, Eric checked the battery monitor logs. He was sad to see that at the 7-day mark solar output dropped noticeably. Turns out one of the flexible solar panels flipped over and partially covered another. Normally the boat deck solar is snapped down, but Eric decided to put the dinghy up and this messed up the usually secure flat panels. One of the panels was secured on one of our dock boxes to get sun, yet apparently not secure enough. Combined with cloudy weather, the boat deck solar was making less juice, and the battery levels slowly went down each day. On the day that we got back to Kosmos, the charge was low enough that the inverter shut off. We are so thankful that we happened to come back the very day that it happened!
It had been unusually cold in San Diego for the last week, and we were very happy to be back in warm weather. We had an early dinner at the Spanish restaurant in the Costa Baja resort. We had gotten up very early for the flight, so it was an early night for us.
