Somewhere back in the cardon cactus barrens, the desert road had jostled the optimism right out of the travelers. Skeptical and grumbling after a flat tire and driving just 30 miles in 3 hours, the group piled into several skiffs called pangas for the ride to a whale-watching base camp on an island in Laguna San Ignacio.
In a winter rite repeated over countless generations, gray whales have come to San Ignacio and other sheltered lagoons on Baja California's Pacific coast, migrating ...