All I have to say is BOO BALANDRA!!!!!!!!!! The day started off normal. We were getting ready to go to the beach. We were going to a new beach on the Sea of Cortez to snorkel, called Balandra. We soon arrived at the beach and started to unpack the van. Me, Fin, an Ollie went out to the water and my mom, dad and grandma all sat on the beach to talk. We came back from the water and I saw that mom and dad weren’t there. Grandma said that dad couldn’t find his phone. Soon mom came back and asked me where Fin had stashed the iPads. I started to get worried. That is never a good question. Fin and Ollie had gone back out in the water but I went to the van to help look for our devices. We tore the van apart, but to no avail. The devices were all gone! What a bummer. It was horrible to know that we had gotten robbed that easily. The van was locked but they picked it. Even though we were all bummed, we decided to go out and snorkel. Before we went mom turned on Find My Phone for all the devices. But, they were all listed as being offline so no luck.

Out in the water we saw a couple cool things by some rocks. I saw a little flounder and some black fish with a yellow stripe. Mom and Fin saw a sea urchin and a star fish thingy. There were also these schools of tiny, clear fish. You didn’t even know you were literally bathing in them until the sunlight hit them. Mostly, I was amazed by the clearness of the water and the vibrant whiteness of the sand.

After we came back to our spot dad walked along the beach in a last attempt to find his phone. I soon got bored and ran down the beach to catch up with him. I asked him how it was going and he whispered that the Find My Phone app was showing his phone right here. There were some people a little ways down and my dad asked them if they had seen a phone anywhere. They responded that they hadn’t seen one but had been hearing one ring nearby. My dad experimentally hit the “emit sound” button on the app, and a clear tone rang through the air!

My dad bolted up a small incline to where the sound had come from and lo and behold, sitting in a paper bag, was ALL of our stuff. It turned out they got my kindle too, but it was all there! We thanked the people on the beach and walked back (with a little more spring in our step) to tell mom, grandma and the kids the good news. We got back and rejoiced for a second but then packed up our stuff and skedadled on out of there. Dad saw the ladrones (pronounced la-drone-ays or thieves in English) watching us walk away with our stuff so there was no reason to hang around.

Hasta luego ladrones!