Oily Stuff

This is a stretch of the Rio Grande River in Big Bend National Park looking north toward Santa Elena Canyon, which can be seen in the background.

This a very remote part of the Park, and of Texas and Mexico, on the left. The water in the River here is cool and sandy, but remarkably clean until it gets down toward Del Rio and points south where diapers, abandoned refrigerators and dead cows, even an occasional bandito will float by in a bloated stench. I have caught rainbow trout in the Rio Grande River below the damn in Colorado, and again in New Mexico north of Taos; there are pan fish to catch down in Texas on a 3-weight rod, but mostly all you catch if you get in the water around Del Rio is a staph infection.

In the park the River is terrific.

Downstream from where this photo was taken it use to be possible to drive across the River to Mexico and up the bluff into a little town called Boquillas and get drunk in little cantinas with dirt floors. There was no official border crossing, no immigration officers around, no passport to produce, nada. Today it's not allowed to drive across but you can walk across the River and do the same thing. Your clothes dry before you get up the hill to where the tequila awaits. The food is good and when the evening is over, you can wade back across and drive into Marathon to spend the night. 

If wading across the River does not suit you there are Mexicans that will come across and get you on burros and take you across, so your back won't get wet.

This is Texas, and Mexico, the way it used to be. Easy going, peaceful, safe, brothers and sisters, hermanos y hermanas.
No problemos. 

To get to this part of Mexico there is one dirt road into Boquillas, across the vast, nothing expanse of the State of Chihuahua, the nearest town Chihuahua City, itself about 130 miles way. This is no country for any man, woman or child and is not a crossing for illegals wanting to get into America. Park Rangers will pick you up quickly and if you do want to cross here, in the Big Bend area, and sneak thru, you've got another 200 miles to walk on the U.S. side to anywhere.
So, from Chihuahua to say, Alpine, it's over 300 miles and chances are very high your brains will bake in their pan
from the sun or a snake will bite you in your journey. Folks cross the River where it is easy, and they can north, fast. 

Now Mr. Trump wants to put a fence along the American side of the River all thru the Park.





















There is not a Texan, or a Mexican, in this part of Texas, Republican or Democrat, that wants to see this happen. It is stupid and unnecessary. What Trump did elsewhere WAS necessary, not here. It will destroy the park, a pristine part of Texas, and Mexico, prohibit Texans from sitting in the River to cool off and destroy a heritage that Texas and Mexico have enjoyed for centuries. Its dumb.

It should NOT be allowed to happen. 

Stop the fence thru Big Bend National Park!