About Our Ecolodge and the Wildlife
Situated at the heart of the Vizcaino Biosphere, Campo Cortez solar powered Ecolodge lies on the shores of San Ignacio Lagoon, at the mouth of one of the largest bird estuaries in the area, offering spectacular opportunities to view breeding and birthing Gray Whales throughout the day. A variety of species of migrating birds take refuge in the mangrove forest along our shoreline, which provides excellent bird watching and tide-pool walks. The local shoreline here is covered with millions of years of ancient whale fossils, bones, and shells.
This region of the Baja Peninsula is truly a piece of paradise that has been left untouched throughout thousands of generations and offers visitors a look at how the peninsula once was before man’s arrival.
Clean, Comfortable, Locally Operated, Perfectly Located
Seemingly perched on the edge of civilization, Campo Cortez offers many modern amenities while maintaining a clean, comfortable and eco-friendly environment. Accommodations include private cabins with their own solar electric source along with comfortable beds and fresh linens. You are never more than a stone’s throw away from the ocean’s edge.
There is no place like Campo Cortez at San Ignacio Lagoon. Remote, far from the daily car traffic of the lagoon, Campo Cortez is at the end of a long un-mapped dirt road over dunes and through low water crossings. Our co-founder and his family run the daily operations and share their wealth of local knowledge with our guests. Remote, quiet, peaceful, and far from civilization is what best describes the location of Campo Cortez.
Harvesting Solar to Power our Needs
Our Ecolodge provides a modern solar system in our palapa and an electrical system that provides 110 AC or 12 volt DC power for all of your charging needs. You can charge up your video and camera batteries anytime in the palapa during the day. In the palapa there is a well stocked Baja library, a gift shop along with drinks and snacks. Constructed from local materials and by traditional building methods, our palapa is the gathering point for all of our daily activities.
You’ll find helpful resources like these in the palapa:
- Library of Books about Baja and marine animals and plants
- Large Screen TV for daily videos and presentations
- Weather monitoring Station
- Coffee and hot water for tea
- Fresh fruit and snacks
- Clean, reverse osmosis drinking water
- Games, cards and other activities
The Heart of The Ecolodge’s Power: The Sun
We are very proud to offer a unique and eco-friendly style of producing power from the natural environment. Campo Cortez has a robust solar generation system that supplies all our power and is sufficient to power refrigeration, lights, charging systems and a variety of safety equipment such as CPAP machines. Our palapa houses the entire system and contains a 20 kilowatt solar system.
The battery bank is really the heart of our system. This is where we store the radiant generated power in modern high capacity 48v Lithium Phosphate batteries. The batteries are fed electricity from the solar panels where it is stored and then power is distributed to an inverter that converts 12 volt DC (direct current) to 110 volt AC (alternating current). This is the type of current you have in your home. With 110 AC current we can then power our refrigerators, freezers and lights.
