The Pacific coast of Baja, Mexico, is the only place in the world—as far as I know—that whales go out of their way to interact with humans.

Every year, the California grey whales travel over 10,000 miles round trip from their summer feeding grounds in the Bering Sea, just south of the Arctic Circle, to their winter habitat in the waters off Baja, Mexico. The whales’ journey is the longest migration of any mammal on the planet.

While in the lagoons in Baja, the whales mate. The grey whale gestation time is twelve months. One year after mating, they return to give birth in one of the three bays on the coast of Baja—Bahia Magdalena, Laguna Ojo de Liebre, and Laguna San Ignacio.

This map of the Baja Peninsula indicates with a symbol of a whale the areas that the grey whales spend the winter.

At the end of this month, I will be in Laguna San Ignacio having close encounters with these magnificent creatures. I had the good fortune of being invited to participate in one of the many enchanting trips that Deborah Stephens leads to interesting and often remote places in Baja, Mexico, where she lives. You might enjoy looking at her website  www.timelessjourneys.net Some of you who read my blog posts will remember that Deborah Stephens led the safari trip I took last summer to Botswana, Africa.

Deborah recently reported that the male whales have already left Baja to return to northern Alaska, leaving the females and their newborn babies behind in the lagoons until they gain enough strength to make the long journey back to the Bering Sea.

After approximately 150 years of hunting whales for their oil brought them to near extinction, the grey whales are now protected by a US and Mexican law enacted in 1940. These gentle creatures and their babies made easy targets for the whalers. The lagoons ran red from the bloody slaughter. Even with the whaling ban, for many decades grey whales completely disappeared from the Baja lagoons.

About 40 years ago a man named Pacheco Mayoral was fishing in the San Ignacio lagoon when a grey whale appeared. The whale leaned its enormous head onto the side of Pacheco’s 18-foot boat and looked him straight in the eye. Pacheco hurried back to his village and announced that the grey whales were coming back and that they wanted to be friends with the humans. The dubious villagers questioned Pacheco, thinking he had gone crazy. They asked in disbelief how he knew this to be true. He said, “The whale told me.”

Since Pachico’s prophetic encounter, the grey whales did indeed return to the remote lagoons. Every year their numbers have grown. And, as Pacheco proclaimed to his disbelieving neighbors, the whales have actively sought out human interaction.

Satellite photo of Laguna San Ignacio where we will be staying

Here’s what Deborah Stephens wrote on her website:

“Adult Grey Whales are up to 49 ft. in length (the females are slightly larger than the males) and weigh 30-40 tons. Their tails are so powerful that they could easily slice our boat in two with one little flick. However, in all the years that people have been coming to the lagoon, there has never been one adverse incident.

“The whales are gentle and thoughtful in all of their interactions with us. I say thoughtful because their brains are larger and more complex than ours, and it is clear when they swim up to us and look us straight in the eye, that it is a deliberate action. From the moment you see them “spy-hopping” on the surface of the water, checking out our boats from a distance in the vast lagoon, until one of the babiesdecides to spin the boat around like a bathtub toy, every minute with them is pure joy!”   

In 2003, I traveled with my sister, Vreni, to Bahia Magdalena, a remote bay south of Laguna San Ignacio. We wanted to make contact with the grey whales. We had a thrilling experience.

We camped on the beach, cooked fresh food brought to us by a fisherman each day, watched the dolphins swim past our campsite every morning and again in the evening. In the mornings, we did yoga on the beach and then headed out in our sea kayaks to explore the area. The highlight of the each day came when the fisherman took us out in his boat to wait for the grey whales to come to us.

Can you imagine what it’s like to have a whale lift up its head to your level and look you right in the eye with it’s enormous eye on the side of its head? I felt like I was gazing into the eye of God. Time stood still in those unforgettable moments.

The females brought their babies to us as though they wanted to show them off. The whales appeared to enjoy being stroked, patted, hugged and kissed.

The whales truly seemed to enjoy the physical contact with humans.

I hope you will join me—virtually—on this trip to Baja, Mexico. I look forward to sharing this adventure with you.