South of the Border

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Whenever we select a location to stop and visit, one of the first things I like to do is to investigate what geocaching opportunities there are. If you have been following our adventures, you would realize we have found all sorts of interesting locations and sights because of geocachers from the local area highlighting something unique. Not many caches do this, but enough do to make it worthwhile to seek them out.
A couple weeks before we even arrived in Big Bend, I had checked out the nearby caches and found one that really piqued my interest. It is called Ride the Burros and it is located just across the border from Big Bend National Park in Boquillas del Carmen Mexico. We have never cached in Mexico. In fact our last visit to Mexico was to Tijuana back in the mid 1990's. The cache description did a good job of describing the border crossing and specifically where the cache was so that any cachers could easily find it. It had taken a little bit of convincing to get Chris to agree to this, but we decided Saturday would be the day.

The crossing is actually done right out of the National Park. And this is a park kind of in the middle of nowhere so it should be pretty safe. The first part of the trip was the longest since we had to drive the complete width of the park to get to Rio Grande Village on the far eastern side. We drove to the Boquillas Crossing station and talked to the park ranger about what to expect.

Sign Outside Border Crossing Building

We headed out the door and down a dirt path to the Rio Grande River. We weren't sure how frequently the boat went across the river to determine how long the wait might be. Obviously we had overthought that aspect of the trip because as soon as we came into view of the opposite shore, Miguel (all names changed to protect their identities!) hopped into his row boat and started across the 35 feet to get to us. Miguel rowed his his boat ashore, hallelujah! And we headed towards where he had landed since there are no docks involved.

Miguel and His Rowboat

Once he got ashore, he said hello, helped us in and pushed the boat off and paddled us across. Miguel didn't say much more, but when I went to pay him the $5 (US) per person, he pointed us to the next man in line. Pablo welcomed us to Boquillas, took our money and handed us two tickets for the return boat trip. Then he asked how we wanted to get into town. Now admittedly, it's barely 3/4 mile so walking was an easy choice, but we decided to make the trip more authentic. Our options, provided by many of the dozen men waiting, were in the back of a pickup truck, a horse, or a burro. We picked the later in keeping with the theme of the name of the cache we would be going for.

Once we told Pablo we would like to ride burros into town, he pulled out his list and started shouting out names. It wasn't clear exactly what was going on. Was he calling out burro names, or burro owners? It took quite a few names being called before somebody came over and pulled out two burros from the makeshift stable. We paid another $10 US for the two burros now on loan to us. After being helped up onto the burros, we were introduced to Alejandro. He was offered as our guide if we wanted. We decided it might make sense to hire him if for no other reason to make sure our burros don't just run off into the desert with us, never to be seen again.

Alejandro and our Burros

Alejandro spoke broken English but it was leaps and bounds better than my Spanish from four years of Spanish classes 40 years ago in high school (sorry Mr Bendecki). He asked where we were from and we said western New York but I'm sure he pictured NY City. Most of the ride up the dirt road into town was quiet with Alejandro making strange clicking noises as he walked behind us. Presumably to keep the burros going the right way. Our two burros were competitive. Mine kept trying to pass Chris' burro, but hers was an expert at cutting mine off. Mine unsuccessfully tried to pass nearly 10 times and on one attempt, I was cut off so severely, I was positive we were just going to end up in the brush along the side of the road.

Chris on Her Burro

Jack's View of His Burro

When we got to the edge of town, Alejandro helped us off the burros and tied them up to a small tree along the side of the road. I hope this place is safe since we didn't bring our bike lock along to secure our transportation. As we continue into town, Alejandro points out various buildings including his own house in the distance. As he would chat with townspeople along the way, I was sure he was commenting on the two gringos he had from NYC! Every few hundred feet, cute kids would run out to us to see if we wanted to buy a bracelet or strange wire animal they had made. No gracias.

Sign Greeting All Visitors Entering Town

One of Many Homes Selling Souvenirs

Our first stop was to a trailer. It was apparently the immigration office. The man at the desk was not interested in our passports and only asked for $2 each to help support some natural area that may be the equivalent to the National Park on the US side. We were each given a wrist band and told to come back when we leave and he would look at our passports.

The plan had been to eat lunch, see the town and get the geocache. The only problem was we had made much better time than we had expected so we were in town at 11 AM - a bit early to eat. So when Alejandro asked us where we wanted to eat; there were two choices after all, we told him we wanted to go find a geocache. Not sure how much of his bewilderment was from the translation he had to do in his head, or if it wasn't clear why two grown adults would want to do such a thing. Either way, we navigated to a small area behind one of the restaurants and I immediately located the hiding spot. As I was signing in, we tried to explain what we were doing but it wasn't clear if he got it or not.

Next we continued further into town. We saw the church and even went inside to check it out. It was all decorated probably for the upcoming Christmas celebration. Another trailer we went into was the Cento de Salud or as we would call it, the clinic. We got to meet the doctor. A rather young doctor. His English was fairly good and we discovered he looked young for good reason - he is only 23 years old. As we continued to walk through town, it was apparent that many of the building were no longer in use. The town had been a big mining town decades earlier, but now had fewer than 200 people living there and many of them were small children. 

View of Part of Boquillas

Bright Church

The motel appeared to have rooms available but I think our visit was already longer than it needed to be, so off to pick between the restaurants whether we were hungry or not. We picked Boquillas Restaurant mainly because it was the first we passed on our way back into town. The owner, cook and server came out to take our order. It wasn't perfectly clear what our choices were, but we recognized cheese enchiladas so ordered them. A couple of Cokes in the old style glass bottles - boy I remember those as a kid. The chips and salsa were good. Hot enough to cause me to work up a little sweat. The enchiladas were good and came with a side of guacamole and a bowl of sliced jalapeños. I suppose this is about as authentic Mexican meal as we can get.

Our Lunch Spot

It took us awhile to get our table cleared but we figured that would bring out the bill. No such luck. Finally we realized we were supposed to go inside to pay. Now that we were full, it was time to hit customs. As we entered the fenced in area, Alejandro yelled at a few others and told us we don't need to go inside. So much for having our passports stamped. As we head out of town, we come around the bend to see our burros still tied up but now with a single horse keeping them company. It probably belongs to one of the other gringos we saw walking through town while we were eating.

The jostling of the the stomach from my burro trying to pass Chris' burro was not pleasant, but at least I didn't get sick. As we were heading down to the river, a pickup truck came barreling up towards us. At first it looked like there was going to be an accident, but Alejandro yanked them out of the way and the truck driver stopped so he could talk with our guide. At the river, we thanked Alejandro and paid him for his services. Then we signed the guest book, handed Pablo our tickets and had Miguel row his boat ashore, hallelujah! Another couple was coming down to head across so we gave them the advice to go with burros.

View Back Across the Rio Grande - Horses, Trucks & Burros Waiting 

When we got to the border crossing building, the ranger asked how it went and then had us use a scanner to check our passport while handing us a phone and telling us to look up at the camera while some remote customs agent asked us the usual questions.

The Rio Grande Village Nature Trail brought us to the campground area of the park. There is a section with full hookups that can accommodate rigs our size. We had not picked this for our camping spot for two reasons: 1) the web site made it tough to confirm the sites even existed let alone being able to reserve one. 2) By being on the far eastern side of the park, any day trip we took would always be heading west and the state park would have been too long of a drive to really explore. The rest of the campgrounds had lots of open sites. One section allowed generators while another did not. 

We followed the nature trail over some floating bridges. Apparently being a low area and right next to the river, the area floods, including the campgrounds at times. The trail brings you around a loop that heads up to a high point giving you a great view of the surrounding area. At many of the trail markers, there were some of the same type of items being sold as what we had seen earlier in the day while in Boquillas. We had read about how the neighbors to our south would cross the river and leave decorated walking sticks, bracelets and the like with only a small jar with a slot for money. Each item had its price marked but none of them appeared to have had any buyers. It wasn't clear if they came back each night, or would leave them there for days on end.

Souvenirs for Sale Along Trail in National Park

The next hike was to Boquillas Canyon. This trail has a great overlook after a good climb. From there you can see sections of the Rio Grande River as it snakes through the area. On the opposite bank was man with canoe and horse that appeared to be selling his wares. I suppose the idea was that he would either bring an item to our side or possibly come and get you for an impromptu border crossing to his "store". The trail comes back down to water level and then continues back into the canyon. At one point we noticed a group of twelve or more people high up on the US side of the canyon in what appeared to be a huge sand dune. People were climbing up and sliding down. It reminded us of some of the activities we saw this summer up in Michigan, just on a smaller scale.

Mexican Man Hoping to Make a Sale

View Back into Mexico of  Distant Mountains