Day 4
We got up the next morning and the day was very overcast, but the wind was gone! It looked like it was going to be a nice morning on the lagoon! We were the only tourists that stayed the night at Antonio's, the rest were taking vans in from San Ignacio 45 miles away. This worked out to our advantage because Dave and I got to go out in the boat by ourselves. Our boat captain was Jorge, he didn't speak any English, but I knew enough Spanish that we could chat. He had been doing whale tours for three years at Antonio's.
To describe the next two hours is hard to do. It was arguably the coolest 2 hours of my life. We ended up having 50 or more whales cruise by us once we reached the mouth of the lagoon where they frollic. The baby whales, some 15-20 foot each, were so friendly that they all wanted to come to the boat and check us out. The mothers were cautious and protective, often coming between their baby and us and sometimes bumping us out of the way! Having a 50 - 60 foot mamma whale bump you in your 18 foot panga was a little scary! I got scared once and Jorge laughed loudly and said "It's okay" and I soon realized they were just being protective and were not going to flip the boat or anything. I know I touched 15, may up to 20 baby whales. Some were new whales, and some were the same baby that just loved the attention. We would move the boat and the babies would follow us! I got to touch a couple mothers, but they were more cautious. Often you'd be touching a baby and then looking below you a couple meters is the mother looking like a submarine just watching the whole scene.
I'll just post one picture here, the rest are in the album linked on the first page.
We finished the whale tour around lunchtime. The total spent at Antonio's was a hundred bucks each for me and Dave. That included the tour, two meals, beer, the cubana rental, and tipping the boat driver Jorge twenty bucks each. It was the best hundred bucks I've EVER spent.
We left San Ignacio and headed north. The weather was still rainy so we wanted to get back up near Bay of LA to see if the weather was better and look for more snakes. We camped several miles up an arroyo/road that was off of the Bay of LA road. Right at the camp spot we found a cool rosy boa!
It was a cool little snake!