Boquillas Canyon: Wednesday, February 17th

We’d heard that this was the area to get great photos of the Rio Grande disappearing between the mountains in the canyon. We wanted to get pictures in the area of the sun setting so waited to go until Dave finished work and took our dinner with us.

The trail was moderate but short and wound beautifully down to the river, over a lot of sand and rocks. Apparently, we’d just missed seeing the Mexicans on the other side, ride their horses across the river to sell their homemade wares to tourists. We saw a lot of people on the Mexican side but no-one came over. As we walked along, there were little ‘stalls’ of goods set up on the trailside, willing us to buy walking sticks and wire/beaded animals and leave money for Mexican school children. They risk quite a lot coming across the river to sell their wares, if caught, they have to go through the deportation process and are taken quite a way north, making for a tough return journey.

We took some fantastic photos, the landscape was gorgeous. It was incredible that the river had forced its way through the seemingly impenetrable Sierra Del Carmen Mountains and in fact continues to do so. There were certainly no complaints from any of us about sitting next to the river and admiring the scenery as we ate our dinner.

We’d read that you could slide down the sand but there was no obvious point at which to do this. Naturally, that was no deterrent for our four, they found a couple of small dune areas and created their own slides. I didn’t realize until later just how much sand they’d managed to accumulate in their clothes. I was dumping out pockets and socks for days afterwards!