The salt is then loaded onto seagoing vessels for export to tables all over the world. San Ignacio is an oasis in every sense of the word. It lies nested in a deep arroyo, protected on all sides by high mesas that make it almost invisible from the surrounding desert. To the highway traveler, a crack of incongruous green appears suddenly in the desolate desert floor, and turns out to be the tops of fruit orchards and thousands of date palm trees. Arroyo San Ignacio is a relief to scorched eyeballs.
Yuccas thrive in the western Vizcaino Desert.
The palm trees are descended from an orchard planted by Jesuit missionary Juan Luyando more than two hundred fifty years ago, near the source of the Rio San Ignacio, which emerges as a marsh springing out of the rocky arroyo bottom. The Spaniards dammed the creek to form a small lake that still provides irrigation water for the town's crops and orchards. From this lake, the mostly dry arroyo runs westward across the desert and empties into the Laguna San Ignacio, an inlet of the Pacific Ocean. Laguna San Ignacio harbors Baja's friendliest whales. The lagoon, fifty miles by dirt road from San Ignacio, is another popular winter tourist site.