The Cheese Weasels Do Big Bend, Texas

[Stichill]

Day 3 - 25 March 2018 - Sierra del Carmen & the Rio Grande

After lunch, we saddled up and headed back around through Panther Junction and southeast toward the Rio Grande Visitor Center.






Coming down toward the river, you see this expansive view of Sierra del Carmen on the Mexican side of the Rio Grande.

It was getting hotter (the mercury was moving above 95 degrees F) and we were keen to find out if we could go swimming in the river. We parked the bikes at "Daniel's Ranch" and made our way to the water's edge.









Two guys brought their swim trunks. I'd forgotten mine, but luckily I was wearing black polyester sport boxer briefs, which looked essentially like swim trunks and and could dry out just as fast if not faster.

We walked out onto a slippery rock and entered the water. It was only 2-3 feet deep. The bottom was muddy ooze until you got out about 4 or 5 feet, then it changed to clean sand. The current was fairly swift, making us work to hold our positions. We theorized that the center of the river was the international boundary with Mexico, so we "swam into Mexico" and yelled back at our non-participating buddy still on shore in the U.S. Then the two other guys decided to make landfall in Mexico on a sandbar. I decided that fun as that sounded, I was only a quick dive away from re-entering the US.


That's me in the center of the border-jumpers.


Making landfall on the Mexico side.