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| Paddling our raft |
If you have been following this blog for a while, you know
that we like to get out in a boat on any body of water we come across, so it
should not be a surprise to you that we couldn’t wait to raft down the Rio
Grande. We took a floating trip with
tiny rivulets but no white water to speak of.
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| The Rio Grande |
Trelingua is a dusty crossroads to the west of Big Bend
National Park. Its sole economy is
tourism; providing housing and restaurants for visitors to the park and as well
as guided driving, rafting, and horse riding tours. The town is located between the national park
and Big Bend Ranch State Park. The state
park is huge, encompassing 55% of all of the state park lands in Texas. Our raft trip started and ended on state park
land, and floated between the US and Mexico along the Rio Grande.
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| Our crew getting in the raft, early morning and cold |
To get to the spot to put in the raft, we drove on hair-raisingly
steep roads through the state park.
Our
guide, Anna-Cole, pointed out places where vehicles had left the road.
We saw a wrecked car and tanker truck abandoned
on the side of the cliff as we were rafting later in the morning.
Recovery had been made impossible by the
terrain and so the wreckage was left there to rust.
Our tentative plans to leave the Big Bend
area by that route (which we thought would be “scenic”) were quashed.
No way we wanted to drive our rig up and down
those crazy hills!
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| Looking back at Dark Canyon from our Mexican sand bar |
We were joined in our raft by another older couple and a
lovely family with two elementary school aged children. We were placed on the raft with some of us on
each side, and the guide at the rear and were told to "paddle" (2 times, 3 times)
or "take a break". Mostly the lazy current
of the river and the efforts of our guide, Anna-Cole, did the work.
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| Anna-Cole making our snack |
The trip took us through gentle rolling hills with cane
grasses on the side of the river. We saw
turtles sunning on sticks along the shallow areas. Eventually, we passed through Dark
Canyon. The igneous rock is actually light
in color, but weathering and microbes have stained the outer surfaces of the
rock black. It was dark and shadowed
inside the canyon. After we floated out
the other side, we stopped on a sandbar for a snack of fruit, cheese and cookies. The sandbar was on the Mexican side of the
river; Anna-Cole explained that there was a mile "grace space" on each side of
the river where people could cross back and forth and have a snack on a Mexican
sandbar. The remainder of the trip was
again through gently rolling hills.
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| Happy Rafters! |
It felt good to be back out on the water again, and to see
this interesting area from another point of view.
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