Chapter 33: Day Two San Ignacio Lagoon 2/19/25
Chapter 33: Day Two San Ignacio Lagoon 2/19/25
Our boat, called a "panga" is only about 25 feet long. There are tons of pangas in Baja which are so named because of the panga fish the boats were originally designed to go after. The design is the result of a collaboration between Yamaha outboard motors and the World Bank. Capable of holding up to 12 passengers and a captain, ours thankfully is occupied by only 7 passengers and a "naturalist" guide.My panga-mates were a couple from the Los Angeles area, a mom and daughter from Madrid and a couple out of Phoenix.
My curiosity and constant questioning yielded the fact that the tour company, BajaEx bought this panga and leased it back to the local captain--an "independent contractor," for one dollar per year. We are reminded to tip him. He is very good. I tip him well. Thank you, Tito.
Here is a bit of what Tito and the other panga captains delivered for us.
Credit Rob Schapiro and Csaba Varga for those two clips.
Our morning session placed us in the midst of over a dozen single grays. They were everywhere all at once. Some came to our panga for a visit and some did not. It was wonderful. In the afternoon, we saw almost nothing except for this: We witnessed five tails--something we had not seen at all on this journey because the grays weren't deep diving. For some reason this afternoon they were. Through sheer incompetence, I failed to record even one of those tails.
This is the seasonal home of gray whales (the rest of the English-speaking world spells that g r E y), in Spanish 'ballena gris" and the scientific default description is: Eschrichtius Robustus. They aren't like the humpbacks I've been frolicking with. They don't have a dorsal fin but they do have a hump, behind which trails a line of knobs that run to their tails. When they dive, it is reminiscent of a dragon's tale. They're not really gray; instead they are splotchy with white splotches remaining where barnacles have attached, lived, died and fallen away.
The planet offers us two varieties of gray whales. Here I am with Eastern gray whales which are slightly different from Western Gray whales which thrive along the coasts of Japan and Russia. There were once gray whales in the North Atlantic but they were hunted to extinction and never recovered. These Easterns migrate up 10 14,000 miles, round trip, every year.
The real reason I was here is the selfish desire to pet one and I achieved that goal. Only once, mind you, but it happened.
Tp the best of my knowledge and from all the research I have done, this is the only place on the planet where this opportunity occurs. Even these whales won't participate in human physical contact out of this lagoon (or two others situated nearby). But they do like to show off.
I met nice people while here. Adopted by a group of seven Houstonians--not that they really had a choice because theirs was a table of eight--we swapped stories over every meal at the "Dinning" Tent.
The camp is set on a desert abutting the lagoon. It's great for me but not six-star for most folks.
The nights have been windy and cold. The mornings offer up a solid chill which is amplified when one boards an open boat and the captain sets off across open water at top speed. I brought shorts. I didn't need them.
Should I come again some day, I'll bring gloves.
