During our Wine & Whales trip with Dawn Solomon, the highlight was our excursion with. Antonio’s Ecotours. Two vans picked up our group at Ignacio Springs Resort and took us on the 45-minute drive to their facility on San Ignacio Lagoon on the Pacific Ocean. This lagoon is a protected reserve for the grey whales. Before setting out in small pangas, we were given breakfast and a presentation on both grey whales and the nature of the preserve.
Unlike other areas where tourists go to see whales during the season, San Ignacio is completely protected and controlled. Only 15 pangas are allowed in a defined area near the opening to the Pacific Ocean. A patrol boat sits at the main entry area to the part of the lagoon open to tourists and makes sure that the small pangas, holding a maximum of 12 people follow the rules. Each panga is allowed 90 minutes in the area. They are not permitted to chase the whales. But people are allowed to interact with the whales if they approach the boats. The only boats permitted in the back part of San Ignacio Bay are authorized researchers from participating universities.
The presenter described to us the cycle of travel of the whales. The females come to San Ignacio to birth their calves. The young whales stay with their mother for the first year, following them back up to Alaska at the end of the season in Mexico. After that people, the juvenile whales stay on their own until they are adults (about 16 years) and start to mate. Grey whales do not travel in pods but rather are independent.
Riding out on San Ignacio Lagoon toward the designated area, we could see the research camps set up along the shore as well as a few other tour group headquarters like that of Antonio’s Ecotours. We were held for about 10 minutes by the patrol boat to wait for a panga to leave to allow us to enter. Once, there we started to see whales in the distance. The captain of the boat did an amazing job to take us into the areas where he believed the whales would go and to just sit and wait. The whales came to us! At first, we would just see tails, fins and backs as they were near us. A few whales would submerge and go under the boat. We were told that if the whales approached the boat and they let us, we were allowed to pat them as long as we did not touch the eyes, tail or fins.
It was truly amazing. Everyone on our panga had the opportunity to pat a whale. This was nothing like the whale watching that we had done in Cabo San Lucas. There when a whale was spotted a dozen or more boats would rush to be near the whale – chasing it. Here, we sat as dozens of whales came to us. We watched the same thing happen to other boats near us. The presenter told us that over 120 whales had been counted in the Lagoon that week. What an experience!
For more information about Antonio’s Ecotours visit them on Facebook at https://www.facebook.com/pages/Antonios-Eco-Tours-Cabanas-San-Ignacio/210052493112482
To join Dawn Solomon and Baja Vine Club’s annual Wine & Whales trip visit the website or https://dawnsinsidersguide.com/private-tastings-cata…/ and visit them on Facebook at https://www.facebook.com/bajavineclub
