It is also possible to see gray whales in Scammon's Lagoon to the north, and Magdalena Bay to the south. Several companies offer whale tours to the various lagoons, and local fishermen have learned to approach the whales as well. You can also just pitch your tent and camp on the beach. Baja beaches are camper-friendly. Although Baja is motorhome friendly, the rough road to the lagoon at San Ignacio is not.
Tours can vary greatly.
There are bilingual guides and cooks. Ours was a small, congenial group of mostly single women from California, Oregon and Japan. There also were a California teen-ager, and a married couple from Mexico City, all of us brought together by a common goal of mingling with our cetacean friends. Scanning the horizon, we watched as whales breached, one after the other, their enormous bodies propelled nearly free of the water before crashing back to sea. Breaching occurs when the whale propels itself all or most of the way out of the water, turns and falls on its back.