The clipboard reads: Tortuga — GubGub. Marcas — G123839. Fecha — 15.03.2026. My partner and I named this one — a quiet tribute to a beloved feline companion, written now into the scientific record of a sea turtle’s life. Every turtle in care receives a name before the work begins, each one chosen by a different member of the group, each one permanent in the data that follows the animal back into the sea. GubGub sits low in a shallow blue tub, ancient and unhurried, barnacled at the shell edges, patient in the way that only creatures with no concept of a schedule can be. Around the canopied work station, the energy is focused and purposeful — gloves on, data sheets out, the multigenerational fishing family of EcoTourtugas moving between the tubs with the practiced ease of people who have done this work long before anyone thought to call it ecotourism.
The Family and the Work
Baja Expeditions supports EcoTourtugas, which operates out of the village adjacent to San Ignacio Lagoon — a family whose livelihood and legacy are inseparable from the health of these waters. The same desert coyotes that chew through the camp’s water pipes in the dark hours are the primary threat to the sea turtles that haul ashore: attacking, stranding, and injuring animals that have no defence against a land predator once they are out of the water. The family finds them, monitors them, and brings them back.
The work under the canvas canopy is methodical and tender in equal measure. Each turtle is measured, de-barnacled, and tagged. A red Velcro hammock is used for weighing — the animal suspended briefly in fabric while data is recorded with the kind of diligence that science requires and commerce rarely rewards. Then the beach cart, the water’s edge, the unwrapping. The turtle moves with surprising urgency back into the dark shallows and is gone.
What Forty Dollars Actually Does
There is a tendency, in the world of luxury travel, to conflate cost with value. A private panga on San Ignacio Lagoon, a Weatherhaven tent with a hot shower, a naturalist who has dedicated years to understanding this ecosystem — these carry their price, and that price is justified. But the forty dollars I hand to the EcoTourtugas family achieves something that no room rate can. It keeps a multigenerational conservation practice alive. It ensures that the data being collected today — the measurements, the tags, the photographs, the names written in careful handwriting on a clipboard — becomes part of a scientific record that will outlast every person present.
Consider that the Arturo Fuente Chateau Fuente Natural I will light later that evening costs roughly the same. Both are worth every cent. But one is gone in an hour, and the other sends a sea turtle back into an ocean it has navigated for decades. The price is identical. The perception of value is not something a number can contain.
The Smoke and the Fire
Hours later, back at camp, the desert has done what it always does after dark — gone completely still. The fire at The Dive Bar has settled into a slow, reliable burn, and the recliner sofas face the lagoon as the last of the dinner conversation finds its natural end. It is here, in this particular stillness, that I light the Arturo Fuente Chateau Fuente Natural. Wrapped in an African Cameroon leaf and protected by the signature cedar sleeve, it delivers an unmistakable Fuente profile — smooth, cedary, aromatic, and perfectly balanced. The first draw is toasty and sweet, with a note of nutmeg settling into base flavours of sweet cedar and toasted nuts. As the smoke progresses, hints of vanilla and a gentle coffee warmth emerge — the kind of balance that a well-made cappuccino achieves without effort.
The Chateau Fuente is the cigar I reach for when I need to think rather than converse. It never gets in the way. It just sits there with you, which on a night like this — where the fire does the talking and the lagoon holds the silence — is exactly what you need. Each draw is consistent, the burn even, the smoke smooth and clean without being inert. It accompanies the evening rather than competing with it.
The cigar reaches its final third as the fire settles lower and the lagoon disappears into the dark beyond the camp perimeter. The flavours ease into toasted nuts, the earlier sweetness having quietly stepped back, the burn remaining flawless to the finish. The Milky Way is overhead. Some days just recalibrate you. You come home a different person than the one who got on the plane.
Conservation travel is not a category. It is a choice — to spend time and resources in places where the act of showing up has direct consequence for something living. San Ignacio Lagoon, the EcoTourtugas family, and the turtles moving through water they have navigated for longer than human record-keeping can account for — all of it exists in a balance that requires active participation to maintain.
The cigar is done. The tubs are empty. The data sheets are filed. Somewhere out in the lagoon, GubGub is already gone.
Read the full story of our adventure with Baja Expeditions in Issue #40 of Folio.YVR Luxury Lifestyle Magazine.
Author Profile
- Helen Siwak is the founder of EcoLuxLuv Communications & Marketing Inc and publisher of Folio.YVR Luxury Lifestyle Magazine and PORTFOLIOY.YVR Business & Entrepreneurs Magazine. She is a prolific content creator, consultant, and marketing and media strategist within the ecoluxury and luxury lifestyle niches. Helen is the west coast correspondent to Canada’s top-read business magazine Retail-Insider, holds a vast freelance portfolio, and is an EIC for Hire. Connect with her here: [email protected].
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