#41 / 2004 Tour 2: Border towns in Big Bend

BIG BEND 2

#41

Big Bend is much bigger than I remember, the roads much more precarious than I remember, and the experience grander still. Besides the fact I didn’t get to regain my experience in the hot springs, I also am not able to cross the border over to the Mexican town of San Elena, the way we did ten years ago.

Back then you could park your car at the end of a trail and look across the Rio Grande onto San Elena. There was a tiny thatched roof on poles that a man rested under. When someone gave him a signal he would row his small boat across the river and pick you up for three dollars a head.

       

The town had no roads, just dusty paths. There was the smallest little plaza, a church, and one or two restaurants. The people there made a modest living off of the occasional tourist from Big Bend. A similar town named Boquillos, a few miles down the river, also enjoyed the same benefit.

       

After 9-11, unlike the town of Acuma on the Amistad Reservoir, the border between the US and these two tiny little towns was closed. As the ranger told me, all this did was create more crime in the park because the honest money occasioned by Big Bend tourists was halted. Now what few people are left sneak across the river to break into cars and perform various other petty crimes. The possibilities of terrorists sneaking across that much expanse to cross the river into America there is preposterous. I wish someone would explain to me why such cruelty was necessary on our government’s part. It wasn’t done in Acuna, so why here? 

It is a crime.