The last great adventure

So now I have returned to my home. I think I will keep writing in this blog, because I like it, and now I have an impressive number of posts so it is worth keeping up. Here is my last travel episode, partially written before I left Texas and completed today. Soon I will write about my return to Wellington, but don't expect that to be very interesting.

Big Bend: Full of Events

I once had a plan. The plan was ambitious, it involved traveling to the East Coast via North Carolina then all the way back to California on virtually no money. Then it was necessary to return home early, so the plan was curtailed; it became a plan to travel to California via New Mexico and Arizona. On even less money. Then Southwest Airlines offered me a cheap flight. So the plans died. So did my dreams, almost. Then I convinced Yasmin, my temporary roommate, to drive me to Big Bend, a national park in southwest Texas on the border with Mexico. And the dreams remained alive.

Oh what a journey. I wanted adventure, we had it. It takes eight hours to drive to Big Bend from Austin. First is the hill country, green and tree filled and gently rolling. Then the empty flatlands of West Texas, which slowly become the desert and mountains of Big Bend. We had four people, a small car and quite a lot of stuff, which slowly expanded so that I was sitting in the passenger seat with my legs tucked up.

We survived the drive there, although Yasmin got a speeding ticket (note, first event). West Texas is real Texas, flat and isolated and very empty. The land we saw from the freeway looked totally unused, no animals grazing or crops growing. It’s the place of ranches and small towns and trucks, the place where you don’t want to be seen wearing an Obama t-shirt. Fort Stockton is the last major town before Big Bend, bless its little heart. A beautifully desolate town, where the hint of the Wild West remains, subverted by a main street of drive-ins and chain stores and kids smoking meth out the back of the trailer. Maybe.

Big Bend itself is totally inspiringly beautiful. It’s a sort of plant-filled desert, with hard ground and spiny cactuses and tough animals lurking around. We saw plenty of roadrunners running, heads down, skinny legs motoring. Then there are the mountains looming, big rocky red ones, looking tired and dusty. Despite it being May and, you know, the desert, it rained much of the time we were there. This is where the events start.

The first campsite we were at was being irrigated. Unsure why. We did move our tent like the nice man said but were still woken up in the morning to find ourselves nearly flooded out. At least we weren’t eaten by javelinas, this brand of vicious pigs that are attracted to the smell of food. (We actually saw some the next day; they looked kind of cute and are very blind.) Oh, and it also rained while we were cooking dinner. Most beautiful moment: the hot springs at night, a natural pool surrounded by the rushing rapids of the Rio Grande. The kind of place money can’t buy, and the stars coming out and the desert all around.

The next day it was off to Mexico, as we took a short walk to see the Rio Grande. We didn’t realize we’d already seen it the night before as it is somewhat unimpressive and not very grande at all. This river forms the border between Mexico and Texas for two thousand kilometers, but is looking a bit thin due to a great big dam and some global warming. It certainly sparked some interesting thought processes in my American companions and I. I mean, you wouldn’t have to swim to get across this river. You could walk across, easily (and the hot springs on the Texas side might provide a good reason to do so). As much as the US might talk of border security, there was no patrol at the river at all, only a station on the road out of the park (story about them coming later). I thought of how the majority of Texans would feel if they could see the little stream that separates them from big bad scary Mexico. We all thought of John Lennon’s ‘Imagine’, and how one of the unforeseen consequences of climate change is erasing boundaries between us.

There was an interesting fellow hanging out on the Mexico side of the river. He was called Victor the Singing Mexican, he was indeed singing and he had left a jar on the US side for donations. There were other artifacts from Mexico for sale around the park. This is pretty obviously illegal, but the park rangers seem to turn a blindish eye beyond putting up notices warning tourists not to buy anything. Victor spoke very good English, bizarre considering we were in the middle of the desert. He said that he used to run boat tours, then 9/11 happened and he couldn’t anymore. I’m sure he has a very interesting story, and some day I would like to return to hear more about it.

After that we moved campsites, to Chisos Basin, up in this beautiful circle of mountains. We took a walk, the Window Trail, which led down between the cliffs and desert trees to an opening that showed the plains so far below, and a stream falling over the edge. It was a very nice hike, just the right length. On the way back it started raining, slowly then quickly, and we ran, arriving back at the campsite dripping and cold. Oh well. Time for dinner, right? Right?

Um, no. We had been deceived into thinking that we could cook our food on a grill outside the visitors centre, as there was a charcoal ban in the rest of the campsite (which become steadily more ridiculous as the rain kept falling). In fact we should have brought our own grill. Oh. After a fair amount of anger (not at each other, luckily) and discussion of what to do, we made the decision to not spend any more money and survive on whisky, marshmallows and cold beans until the morning. So we huddled up in our tent as the clouds gathered overhead, and drunk ourselves into sleep as the thunder rumbled and the rain came down.


Of such things are camping holidays made of. It seems impossible to go camping and not have about ten things go wrong. Bears, being late, losing people, rain, not enough food, too much food. The normal. But on our way home we were struck by more events, quite extraordinary, coming like lightning. Out of nowhere, that is. So we packed up on the Saturday morning, drove some more through the park, once again awed by its beauty but not particularly sad to be leaving.

I have said that we did not notice any security at the actual border with Mexico. That’s because all the guards are hanging out at a nice comfortable post on the road out of the park, where they don’t have to walk too much. Their job seems to be confined to asking people if they’re US citizens, and if they reply in the affirmative, letting them go on their way. Given that we were all strictly legal, how could we mess this up? Well… Confronted with an official asking me if I am a US citizen, I have to say no. Really, I do. Even if it seems very unlikely that he will ask for any ID and probably just let us go on our way with no fuss. Even if I am the least Mexican-looking person in the car, being the only blond one and having the fairest skin. But the thought of the trouble I could get in for claiming to be a US citizen when I am very much not is quite intimidating. So, I confess that I am not a native. What follows is a confusing story told in two-part harmony as both Yasmin and I try to explain that I’m a New Zealand citizen, but I don’t have my New Zealand passport, only my UK one, as I’m a citizen of both, but this one doesn’t have my visa in it, and I didn’t bring my other one as I didn’t expect to need it, and I keep it safe at home because it’s got my visa in it, and I’m here on a tourist visa, but I was a student, but then I left, then I came back. On a tourist visa. Yes, I guess that’s a B1. I don’t know.

Luckily the Texan officials seemed a bit confused. I guess they don’t have New Zealanders with UK passports coming through very often. So they went to check my name, found I was OK but handed me a piece of paper while warning me that I had to have the right passport on me, or else I could go to jail. Or be fined. No one told me this. Then they let us go, thankfully without searching the car for drugs. Or more Mexicans, which we could very easily have had hiding in the trunk.

Outside of Fort Stockton we had our last and most serious event. We were driving down the right lane of the freeway, probably at a speed that seemed quite normal but would be unthinkable on a New Zealand road. There were some trucks in front of us, three or four maybe. One truck was passing one of the others. I expressed surprise that trucks could overtake each other, as they are the road equivalent of wooly mammoths. So we came up behind and moved into the left lane, and began overtaking the last truck in line. We were at least halfway up his body when he began MOVING TOWARDS US. Us, little tiny car sitting in the left lane. I think what happened next was that Yasmin slowed down, and possibly ran off the road a bit. It’s all a bit dizzying. I just remember the massive truck being very very close to our right side, and probably screaming, before we got behind it.

It was all very disturbing. Not long after, we passed the truck. It seemed odd that the container on the back was completely unmarked (no ‘How’s my driving?’ sticker, thanks very much). The cab had the name of a Florida company on it. We furiously took down every number we could. Then we hit a sudden rainstorm, and the truck sped up. The speed limit for trucks in that part was 70, and he was doing 80, and it was raining! Crazy man! We were worried. We thought he was probably on drugs. Apparently he made kissy faces at us as he went past. How evil. Later on, the rain stopped, and we passed him again. We eventually made the decision to call the police. They caught up with him outside of Ozone, we saw the car go past. Who knows what the result was? Maybe he sweet-talked his way out of it. Maybe they found the container was full of coke. We don’t know.

In the end, after several more rainstorms and passing an accident, we arrived safely back in Austin. Oh Austin, how I miss you now. How I particularly missed you while being rained on in the wilderness and while on that scary fast freeway. How good it is to have a roof over your head, and food in the fridge, hot water and soft blankets.