2006/01 Southwest USA trip (MN-TX) - Boquillas Canyon |
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We drove back slowly to the tunnel that leads to Rio Grande village, enjoying the road and the day and the scenery. Back on the main road we met up with the Germans again, and gave them a tour of the Tiger. Afterwards, we drove to the Boquillas Canyon.
This is where we traveled with the kids back in 1988: taking a rowboat across the Rio Grande and thenrenting four burros from a bunch of guys straight out of a Clint Eastwood spaghetti western. The burros took the kids, with us walking, to Uncle’s cantina in the town of Boquillas, Mexico, where we had tacos and beer and bought blankets. We wanted the burros to take us along main street but the burros would not go an inch past Uncle’s. They took us back to the river and the rowboat.
Back in 1988 this was a great arrangement with no interference by border guards or customs, but it was all stopped about a year after 9-11 and now it’s very illegal. This had been quite a blow to a town that had its boom in the days of candle making (from the candelilla cactus) and then partly recovered with the tourist trade. Now they are back to the traditional border industries of smuggling people and drugs.
Boquillas Canyon is awesome, with great cliffs towering over the river. There used to be an enormous patch of cane at the 
entrance to the canyon, and the only way in was through a tunnel under the cane. That’s all been cut back presumably for added visibility for the border patrol, but it’s a shame that it’s gone. The river is only about eighty feet wide at this time of the year, so crossing the border is easy, and obviously the Mexicans do it often as there are a number of “self-service” shop sites, selling walking sticks, painted rocks and gemstones. Back in ’88 I’d bought some calcite from one of the Mexicans but all the pieces disappeared over the years, so I bought some more this time.
We needed to head back to Solis, but we had plenty of time so we thought we’d take a different road, one that started at the foot of the Chisos Mountains and passed through the Glenn Springs area. It turned out to be quite a challenge, all rock and holes and drop offs. We were either hugging the left or the right, much of it at walking pace, trying to stay upright on the slopes. On the hill at Glenn Springs I had to walk the hill first to make sure we had enough road left to make it, as there were great gulleys eroded out of it. Sandie said it was like traveling in a rock polisher, and certainly most of our luggage had sort of mingled into a big heap in the back.
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Big Bend at night (6.22) |
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After about 12 miles the sun set and we were in the dark for the last 15 or so. Luckily this part of the road was better, but it was still slow going as even the little holes and dips look big by headlights.
Saturday January 14th
It was a cold night, made even colder by our forgetting to close the windows! The morning was overcast, so it didn’t warm up much. We climbed the hill behind us searching for neat cacti and rocks, particularly agates. 
We saw some good agates, but there’s also a kind of rock here that’s grey clay-like material surrounded by a polished hard shell of agate-like appearance. If they went into a rock polisher then they’d just disappear into nothing! We found other rocks that had been split by heat and cold into a half dozen pieces, still in position, like a puzzle waiting for assembly. The ground is half-covered by ankle-height cactus and it’s all too easy to drop into a crouch and sit on one. See picture! Sandie took a tumble down the hill shortly after this but luckily didn’t damage any cacti.