We drove 40 miles (90 minutes) to San Ignacio Lagoon this morning on a type 2 road, which many people had described to us as awful. We didn’t enjoy it surely, but maybe because of the descriptions we’d heard, we didn’t think it was so bad (better than your roads in Monteverde, Jim and Phebe). We did, however, decide we won’t take the Chalet on type 2 roads. We probably wouldn’t have felt comfortable going even half the speed we did today if we’d had the trailer and were glad we left it behind in the campground and made it a day trip. Once at the lagoon, we found the Ecoturismo Kuyima Camp (pictured) and after a briefing, went at high speed in our panga (small boat) with a guide and two Mexican tourists until we got to the part of the lagoon where observation of the whales is allowed. They were everywhere, whichever direction you looked. While not always, often we were within 20 feet of them. Only the adult females and baby whales hang out in the lagoon, and some of the females have not yet given birth, so they swim around in pairs until their time comes. The whales are in the range of 15-20 meters in length. At several points a single adult female came within 5-10 feet of the boat, looked at us, then swam directly under the boat, which was slightly adrenaline-producing as we could imagine what might happen if she decided to come up for air while beneath our small boat! The weather was sunny and warm, the water was clear, and the scenery was spectacular, with hills in the distance beyond the shoreline. Our guide spoke no English and Cathryn remains sensitive about her somewhat tortured Spanish, so we didn’t learn much about the whales, and the guide didn’t seem to have a teaching role in any case. We got back to our campground 3pm and plan to eat dinner at a restaurant on the square in town tonight. There are 4-5 other RVs in this campground, and we expect them to get progressively fuller as we continue south into the more populated tourist areas of La Paz and the Cabos.
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