4/3/15

We left for Laguna San Ignacio at 730am to make sure we gave ourselves enough time to get to the 11am start time. We did get there with a little time to spare but the roads here are so bad and signs are so infrequent some of the time we could only go 5-10 mph and hope we had gone the right way.

When we finally found it they said as soon as we were ready we would leave and we would get lunch afterwards. We ended up on the panga with one guy who was a film maker and a Mexican family so there was plenty of room which ended up making it so much better.

Oliver was a little scared by how fast the panga went but it didn't last. When we got to the first spot there were whale spouts everywhere you looked. It was amazing, I almost cried. Some came up close but not close enough to touch. Then we kind of took off toward these rough looking breaks and I was kind of mad wondering why we left that awesome spot. Little did I know we were about to be surrounded by grey whales and their calves. You could look any which way and see a mother whale and/or her calf. A lot of them came right up to the boat, the calves, so that they could see you and you could touch them. At one point their were 3 calves coming up all around us. We saw the mothers of course but they never got close enough to touch, they were still only like 5-10 feet  away. They apparently liked to be splashed so we would splash a little to attract them and then when they came up we would keep splashing them and they did really seem to enjoy it. Sometimes if we splashed a lot it would stay up for 15-20 seconds just looking at us. I got to touch 4 of them. I took like 200 pictures of the whales and got a lot of video too, I really could've gotten about 70 minutes worth if I had recorded the whole time because there were just that many but I wanted to just enjoy them. It was so worth the time and money!

They were all grey whales and there is a part of the lagoon that is shallower and more salty which is where they have their calves so then it is easier for them to float after they are born. We were told that for the first 20 minutes the calves need their mothers to keep their blowholes above water so they can breathe then they can do it themselves. So no boats go over to that part (which I think is great) but the mothers and their calves are not shy at all once they come out of that area. 

Oliver got scared and/or mad the attention wasn't on him but he eventually fell asleep on a blanket on the bottom of the boat. He is the only 2 year old I have ever known who will tell you he is tired and go to bed.

Grey whale calf, you can see it looking at us

Calf and mother

Loving the splashing

Panga we went out in

Touching whale next to boat

After that we got a great fish taco lunch and headed back to the actual town of San Ignacio to find a hotel and explore the little town. We ended up staying at this tiny little motel near the center of town which actually said the hotel name and that they had hot water 24 hrs. It was funny. We took a nap and then went to find supper. There was a group of teenage boys sitting outside the house next to the restaurant playing guitar and singing, it was amazing just to sit and listen. We went to bed early.

4/4/15

Oliver was up so early this morning like 5am maybe even before I didn't want to look. We walked to town, bummed around and got breakfast before heading back to wake Paul up and that was only 630am. So we met up with the crew and walked to town to look around and got some groceries since they had a great store there before heading back into the car. We stopped after a few hours and had a picnic lunch at a park, a concrete park surrounded by very busy streets that is. At one point a truck with a guy who looked very unconscious in the flatbed surrounded by 3 of his friends drove by and then a police car pulled them over and then the ambulance came and then another before they all left so I don't think it was good but we didn't go gawk. We drove through a lot of places along the coast we will go with the boat so we drove through after that. We laughed about how we needed a vacation from our vacation, poor Americans. Once we got back to the boat everyone was exhausted so we just showered, read and went to bed.

4/5/15

Slept in a little then went with Christine to Loreto to use the internet, get a few more groceries and drop off the rental car. Paul and Oliver stayed behind to move the boat back to the free anchorage, get water and clean the outside of the boat. When we went to bring the car back the ladies son came along to drop us off at the marina and at one point she had him drive us and I was asking him in Spanish how old he was and he said 14 and I was like really, how long have you been driving he said since he was 10. Ok I guess that is ok. Honestly he was a better driver than he mom. So we got back, ate and met up with Christine and Erik to have a few drinks and play yahtzee. We will leave tomorrow morning to go the 2 miles to the island. Our plan is to circumnavigate the island and go from there. It may take us a week or two so we will write when we can.