The oldest of the whale camps on Laguna San Ignacio, run from an office on the plaza in San Ignacio town and a camp out at the lagoon, sixty kilometres away down a dirt road.
The season runs roughly mid-January to mid-April, when grey whales arrive from the Arctic to calve in the lagoon's warm shallow water. San Ignacio is the one where the whales are "friendly" — mothers bring their calves alongside the pangas and allow themselves to be touched, behaviour that began here in the 1970s with a fisherman named Pachico Mayoral and has been passed down among the whales since.
The number of boats on the lagoon is capped by the biosphere reserve and the camps hold the permits. Day trips are possible from town; staying at the camp for several nights is what the operators recommend, because encounters are not guaranteed on any single morning.