We left on Friday, Sept. 7. My friends and I boarded the 7:45 am AeroCalifornia flight, and we took off right on time. We got to a point just south of the San Vicente area (that's an educated guess), when the stewardess came onto the intercom, saying that the plane had to turn around and land in Tijuana for mechanical reasons. We were never told what the problem was, but we assumed a light must have come on in the cockpit, or there was a pressure problem of some kind. It was a rough landing in TJ, as the pilot "bounced" us onto the runway. After about 10 minutes on the tarmac, all passengers were told to de-plane, but that we could leave our belongings on board. After a little over an hour wait, we were allowed back on the plane, but we had to go through Mexican customs! I had all my paperwork on the plane, so I was allowed to go get the articles and come back. We finally took off again around 10 am. We landed in La Paz at 1:00 pm local time, about two hours late.

After arriving, we found our shuttle, and were off to the Hotel Los Arcos (Cabañas section). We checked in, got changed, and headed to the pool at the big Los Arcos. The water and weather were perfect. After a few minutes in the pool, we got out to play Ping-Pong at the hotel. We played a few games, then decided to head back to the room to get ready for dinner. Dinner was a little late, at a restaurant along the malecon (I don't recall the name). It was very good food. After a long, restful dinner and a few drinks, we walked back to the hotel, watched a late movie, and dozed off for the night.

The next day, Saturday, Sept. 8, we awoke a little later than we wanted (9 am). We got ready, and after a fairly quick breakfast at the La Terraza restaurant (at the Hotel La Perla), we grabbed a taxi to take us to Playa Tecolote. We set our items on a table of one of the restaurants there, having been given permission by the waiter, with the promise we would eat lunch there later. We got into the nice, warm water, and my friend and I proceeded to play "Smashball", a game with a little rubber ball and two oversized paddles. About 20 minutes into our playing, I stepped back to hit a shot, when I felt a sharp pain hit my right big toe. I thought I had stepped on a rock or a broken shell. I immediately lifted up my foot, but the pressure persisted. I shook my foot in the water, and whatever had a hold of me let go. I thought at first, it was a big fish, until about 5 minutes later when I spotted the perpetrator. A blue crab, about 6-7 inches wide, was sitting about 10 feet from us in the shallows. He had pinched me hard enough to put two cuts into my toes and draw blood from one of them. I wanted desperately to catch him and throw him in a pot of boiling water, but he quickly ran out into the deep, and was not seen by us again.

A few minutes after the "attack", I was returning one of my friends bad smashball hits, when I landed on my right knee, onto a small rock. I scrapped the knee up pretty bad, and again started bleeding. Literally 10 seconds later, I stepped on something in the ocean (again, the right foot involved), and opened up a small cut on the bottom of my foot.

After a couple of hours at the beach, and enjoying a fried fish lunch, we headed back to La Paz and to our hotel. A short dip in the pool and a couple of games of Ping-Pong made us very tired, so we headed back to the room. It was about 6 pm. We wanted to go out to dinner that night, but we decided to take a "cat-nap" first. Luckily, one of my friends woke up and in turn got us awake -- it was 9:30 pm! We decided that we really weren't too hungry, so we turned on the TV and again had a short night of movies before going back to sleep, this time for the night.

The next morning, Sunday, Sept. 9, was almost a carbon copy of the day before -- breakfast at La Terraza, cab to Tecolote, Smashball and lounging around for a few hours before catching the cab back to the hotel. Again, we headed directly to the pool and Ping-Pong, before going back to the room to prepare for dinner. We chose Carlos 'n Charlie's that night, and it was very good. Sunday's are always fun in La Paz. The Mexicans treat the day as a "day of rest", so the beach was packed with locals. Also, the malecon was alive with many people, young and old alike, walking the streets. We had a fun night.

The next morning, Monday, Sept. 10, we had a planned trip to Isla Espiritu Santo. We caught our boat and were on the water by 8:45 am. The boat ride to the island was about an hour. We approached our first bay, and began snorkling in about 10 feet of water. The fish were there (as always), but what I found amazing was the amount of coral still alive. I expected coral beds, but I expected a lot of dead coral. These seemed alive and some were even very healthy looking. The fish were amazing, I saw a large spotted eel (could have even been a moray eel), and I noticed a lobster in its lair. The best site, I thought was a particular starfish I saw. It was a fat-legged kind, about 10-12 inches across, completely black, except for little pyramid shaped spines all over its skin, that were bright, bright orange. Really beautiful.

Of course, our trip was not without incident. As had been the case with me throughout the trip, I again slightly injured my right leg. I was climbing back onto the boat after snorkling, and slipped. My leg went under the boat, and scrapped underneath. I was left with about 15 small, minor cuts and abrasions on my leg, to go with the cut under my foot, my crab bite cuts, and my skinned knee. Yes, I looked a mess!

After a long day at the island, complete with snorkling and a visit to a beach for a while, we started to head back to La Paz. The ride back took over 2 hours. The afternoon winds had picked up, and were blowing the boat sideways (out to sea). The swells made for a rough and slow ride back to the harbor. All in all, it was a very enjoyable trip.

As you can imagine, after our adventure, we were hungry. So, we got showered, dressed, and headed out to eat. It was only 6:30, which seemed a bit too early for us to eat on our last night in La Paz (or so we thought), so, we took a long walk. We walked the mission in town, and toured that for a few minutes. My friend stopped at a pharmacy to pick up some Picot (like an Alka Seltzer) for his upset stomach. Finally, around 7, we headed back to Carlos 'n Charlies to eat. Dinner was very good (again), and again we spent a leisurely time sitting and talking while watching a slow Monday night drift away. We headed back to the room at about 9:30, and fell asleep as we watched TV.

Tuesday, Sept. 11, was supposed to be our last day in La Paz. Unfortunately, the tragedy in New York and Washington prevented this from being our last day. We actually were very stunned. We all awoke around 8:30 am, and one of my friends said he would take a shower. While he was in the bathroom, my other friend and I turned on the TV. We saw a Spanish channel, which was showing a building that looked like it had been bombed. As you may know, my Spanish is not great, but I did hear the word "Palestinian" from the Spanish broadcaster, so we suspected at that time that this was a bombing in Israel. We turned the channel over to CNN, where we were greeted with the horrific news. The building we had seen was the Pentagon, and a scroll bar on the bottom of the screen announced that a plane had crashed into the World Trade Center. We were completely stunned.

As the next couple of hours went by, it became apparent that we were probably not going to leave that day. We decided to leave the hotel, and check around the corner at the AeroCalifornia office, to see what we had to do. As we approached the lobby, we spotted some American fishermen that had been on our flight into La Paz. Their flight was at 8 am local time. They were actually on the plane, getting ready to leave the gate, when they were told that the flight was not going to take off. They had to go back to the hotel.

We arrived at the Aero California office, and explained that we were scheduled on the 1:30 pm flight. We were told, as we expected, that the flight was canceled. They were not sure about the next day's flight, that we should check back later that night. We decided to head to La Terraza for breakfast. There was a big screen TV set up to show the news up to date about the tragedy.

After breakfast, we headed back to the hotel, explained our situation, and asked about staying another night. We were told that it would be no problem, and we were even given a 50% discount on our room. We were running low on cash, and not wanting to use our ATM's if we could avoid it, we decided to start charging things like dinner, breakfast, and the hotel. We also decided not to spend the $30 we would have to to go to Tecolote again.

That afternoon was spent mostly playing Ping-Pong, with a couple of dips in the pool interlaced between the games. We also spent a long time in front of the TV, getting constant updates. We walked to the AeroCalifornia office and asked about Wednesday flights, which we learned were also canceled. They said that they would book us on the Thursday flight, but there was no guarantee we would get on.

That night, we mulled over our options. Since none of us were on much of a time constraint, we decided to just "go with the flow", and see what happened with our flights. We did agree that we wanted to try to be home by at the latest Friday, preferably Thursday.

The next morning, we headed straight to the AeroCalifornia office again. We were told that the Thursday flights were still open, but that they probably would be canceled. We then asked about the option of flying into Tijuana. We were told that was an option, if we wanted it. We told the agent we would talk about it, and come back later.

That afternoon, we received a phone call from an AeroCalifornia agent, saying that the Thursday flight was canceled. We were asked if we wanted to be booked on the 2 pm flight to Tijuana. We said yes, with the assurance that we could change to a Friday LA flight if we so chose. Later that afternoon, we walked back to the AeroCalifornia office, and were told that the Friday flight to LA was still open, but when we asked if it would be better to go to Tijuana or to wait to go to LA, the agent said, "you should probably try to go to Tijuana." That night, over dinner and Pina Coladas at Carlos 'n Charlie's, we made the decision to fly into Tijuana, walk across the border, and have my wife pick us up on the US side and drive us back to LA.

The next morning, Thursday, Sept. 13, we woke up, got ready, and immediately headed to the AeroCalifornia office. We exchanged our Sept. 11 La Paz to LA tickets for Sept. 13 La Paz to Tijuana tickets. We were asked to sign a waiver, freeing AeroCalifornia of any guilt or financial responsiblity to us, because of this problem.

After we left the office, we walked to a pay phone, where I called my wife Martha, and explained our intentions. The flight was to arrive in Tijuana at 2:45 pm local time, we anticipated about an hour wait at the border walk through, and she would meet us in San Ysidro at about 4 pm. I would call her on her cell phone as soon as we crossed to the US, to see where she was.

After breakfast, we went back to the room, packed up, and were picked up by our shuttle at 12:15 pm. We got to the airport, and checked in. We were assigned three seats completely separate from each other, as the flight was full. I'm sure it was one of the first times that this flight had almost all Americans on it, instead of the usual Mexican passengers. We took off a little late (about 2:15), and into a stiff wind. We found out later that a tropical storm was situated about 200 miles off of the coast of Baja, and that the winds we were having were from the outer edge of that storm.

The flight to Tijuana was very easy. We didn't notice much more security at the La Paz airport, except that we were not allowed to go to the gate until 30 minutes before the flight. The agents were also only allowing one passenger at a time to place their bags through the x-ray machine. In Tijuana, our bags were thoroughly searched as we left the airport.

For 150 pesos, were able to get a cab ride from the airport to the border. I had never walked across the border before, but I have driven across many times. I can tell you that the lines to the US were very, very long with cars. It appeared to me, that all border gates were open -- the first time I can remember that to be the case. Still, it looked like at least a 2-3 hour wait for the vehicles. Our line was long, but it moved very quickly. We put our bags through an x-ray machine, then went through Immigration. We were not asked a single question. As we left immigration, we put our bags through another x-ray machine. We did notice a lot of private security guards in and around the building, along with Immigration officers. Not many customs officials, though.

We walked out of the building and on to American soil for the first time in a week. We walked along San Ysidro Blvd., about 1 1/2 miles to reach the Denny's where we were to meet Martha. She was there, and had been there about half an hour. The drive home was uneventful, just a little bit of traffic in the North San Diego area, but no other problems.