Thursday, January 26th, 2006 - Brownsville, Texas and a short visit into Mexico.

When we roused ourselves to get dressed the next morning, we noticed other differences with our beachfront campsite compared to the desert. When we donned our clothes they felt quite clammy, and when Monika cooked breakfast all our windows and mirrors fogged up, which made shaving a rather hit or miss process! Since it was cloudy with occasional light rain, we decided to drive in to Brownsville and see that plus do some necessary shopping.

The trip to Brownsville was quick despite having construction for about 10 miles, and once there we continued straight down to the border crossing. Parking the truck outside a money exchange, we paid 60 cents each for the privilege of walking across the bridge into Mexico. On the other side we strolled along the main street of Matamoros for a bit, but turned back after we were accosted by 3 different people wanting to sell us a taxi ride into the town marketplace, some kind of religious pamphlet, and heaven only knows what else. I could certainly understand why they would target a gringo with a hip belt containing a camera, a GPS, and a water bottle; I mean, I might as well have had a big red sign on me saying, "Touristo!". But still, being repeatedly accosted and importuned in a foreign language made me feel hassled, so we cut short our visit to Mexico and I vowed to learn Spanish for our next visit.

Walking back toward the U.S., we stopped at "Garcia's", a corner store that combined a pharmacy, a restaurant, and rather large gift shop. The gift shop was large enough to have some things that appealed to us and we purchased two Navajo mugs, a carved obsidian face, a tiny vase and a sewing thimble for Monika. We also found a small hand-painted folding table for the trailer and I found a small onyx chess set for me that I picked up because we decided to give our old one to Martin for his new apartment. It all came to $31, and Garcia's was so oriented to U.S. tourists that they accepted U.S. currency and gave U.S. change back, which simplified matters greatly for us.

Burdened with our purchases, we walked back to the border crossing and paid 30 cents for the privilege of walking back across the bridge into the U.S. That raises the trivial but intriguing question of why it costs twice as much to walk over to Mexico than it does to walk back from Mexico. In any case we breezed through U.S. Immigration and Customs, I expect because we looked exactly like tourists who had just bought a bunch of stuff in Mexico. I was thinking we'd be searched for cheap prescription drugs, liquor, or cigarettes, but she just wished us a nice day and off we went.

We packed our treasures into the truck and drove back out of Brownsville, which appeared to be an economically vibrant and bustling city. We stopped off to have lunch at "Taco Betty's", a restaurant that had a full parking lot and seemed to offer authentic Mexican cuisine. The menu at Betty's was only in Spanish, the waitress only spoke Spanish, the guitarist sang only Spanish songs, so we inferred that most of those indecipherable menu items were Mexican or Spanish entrees. Monika had chalupas and I had a diet plate that featured grilled chicken, salad, rice, refried beans, and some flour tortillas that I used to make soft tacos. Both entrees were delicious and it is even possible that mine was relatively low fat. Our waitress pointed at one part of the menu that specified drinks, and we ordered by pointing at two of those. Those turned out to be really delicious fruit drinks, mine was melon and Monika's was mixed fruit, and both were excellent and big enough that we took the remainder with us!. That made me curious if these fruit drinks were just some gimmick peculiar to Betty's place or if they were really common in Mexico, but in any case it was a refreshing change from the carbonated soda offerings that predominate in the U.S. The bill for all this, by the way, was $11 although we left a $3 tip for the waitress and another buck for the guitarist (it seemed only fair, he was dressed in a suit and had a nice voice even if we couldn't understand any of the songs). After we learn the language we will make an extended foray into Mexico to really see the people and sample the culture, but that will have to wait for the future.

After driving back to camp we rested a bit and then walked south on the beach and around the southern end of the island out onto a fishing pier. Isla Blanca Park takes up pretty much completely the southern tip of South Padre Island. We enjoyed the gulls perching on every available surface, be it sign or statue.

We continued to search for a bathroom that would have hot showers and Monika finally found one hidden among the campers in a different area. Score! When we returned to the trailer I grabbed my towel, soap, and shampoo and was immediately on my way back to that bathroom. Boy did that feel good; I had been almost desperate enough for a shower to hook up our trailer's water heater and burn perfectly good propane gas to heat the water to take a shower, but this way I avoided all that grief. Afterwards we had another quiet evening and were lulled to sleep by the soothing sound of the surf on the beach.