Some of you may be aware that Jack Richardson and two of his friends have been planning a trip they call the "Tour de Tejas" upriver from the Gulf of Mexico to El Paso.

Their plan is to sail a 34-foot canoe against the current. In the mission statement for the trip, Jack solicited volunteers for people to serve as "4th man" for a section of the trip.

If you were interested in volunteering to join Jack on his trip, I would heartily recommend you not apply to be 4th man on the Eagle Pass to Amistad section. 

This is not one I would heartily recommend traveling downriver in a 15-foot canoe, that is, when there even is a river. 

I am not much of a purist for anything, but especially not for the way I do things on the river. One of my former students suggested it wouldn't be right for me to ever leave the river on my entire 1,250-mile trip.  He even offered to bring me supplies at every necessary point so I would never have to leave the flood plain.

I mention this because I thought nothing of skipping the 13-mile section from Amistad Dam to Ciudad Acuña once I saw what a logistical nightmare putting in below the dam was going to present. Plus, Hayesy clearly badly wanted to get on the road back home and I felt like I had already overstepped my boundary with him.   So once we drove from the dam into Acuña via the Mexican side road so that I could buy supplies for the next leg of the trip, I decided not to make him drive me back out to the dam.

I can go back and do the 13 miles later this winter.

Let me go on record here as saying Acuña is hands down my favorite Mexican border city, and I've always found it one of the friendliest cities I've ever visited. I have a long history there, and in fact, one of two Spanish nicknames I have is el guerrerillo de Acuña, bestowed upon me one night by a man in a bar.  Hiram Franco, a close friend from Chihuahua, and I were there playing baseball, and in the post-game revelry, Hiram, who has more charisma than any person I've ever been blessed to meet, selected one shy guy from the ever present adoring crowds he seems to attract, and asked the man to give me a nickname.  The entire crowd grew silent and the poor guy seemed to be wilting under the pressure when suddenly he blurted out, "El guerrillero de Acuña!" The entire bar broke into a raucous applause, and the name stuck.

So the "warrior from Acuña" was back in town and looking for a place to resume canoeing, and seemingly the entire city was eager to help. The crowd which saw me off at the riverbank below the international bridge swelled to fifty by the time I finally had tied all the gear in and shoved off. And I don't think I've ever received a warmer send off.

But first while Hayesy was still present and helping me tote all the gear to the shore, two men appeared to ask what the hell we were doing. It turns out the riverside park is private, owned by a local factory. 

For times such as these, I had a letter of blanket permission issued to me by the Mexican consul in Laredo, and the better dressed of the two men wanted me to produce it. Once I did, his demeanor changed dramatically. And I sent the other guy off to the store to buy a few things I had forgotten while Hayesy was still taxiing me around.

When I finally did depart, this same man warned me that the river rose dramatically at night. I needed to consider this when I selected my camps.

Leaving Acuña, the river is crystal clear, similar to the Pecos in that respect, good for looking at fish, not so good for looking at everything else in the river bottom.

The truth is the biggest paddling obstacle below Acuña is automobile tires discarded in the river. Hundreds of them. At every riffle, I had to navigate around them.

The day was warm and sunny. I would have no idea that it would be the last such day for a very long time.

On my way to my first camp I encountered a Border Patrol fan boat, and the two officers piloting the craft were kind enough to immediately shut down the engine so as not to create wake. I paddled up to their boat, and clung to the side while we drifted downriver chatting. One of the young guys was from Laredo and we had friends in common. Like the two Border Patrolmen Hayesy and I met on the lake, they were especially friendly, a nice change from our first encounter with the B.P. above our bowl camp above Langtry.

I camped on an island maybe ten miles downriver across from a river pump three men were repairing. I asked if I could cut firewood near the pump, and the foremen replied in Spanish, "cut the whole damn ranch if you want. It's not mine."

In the twenty minutes I was sawing wood, the river rose a full foot and then it came up another two feet by dark.  But by the time I was loading the boat in the morning, it was quickly receding to its daytime level.  Just as I was about to begin tying in the gear, the Border Patrol fan boat arrived again, this time with a different pair of young agents aboard. They were equally as friendly as the two from the day before. I asked about the diversion dam I knew existed downriver, and one told me it was "only about a mile or two away." 

As they were leaving to patrol further downriver, the driver revved up the fan and the force of it blew everything I had not yet secured into the water. Had I not been holding the canoe securely, I'm certain that blast would have capsized it.

The "mile or two" turned out to be approximately eight miles, but when I arrived the agents were waiting for me "because we want to make sure you get around the dam safely." Their presence was indeed intimidating if some Mexicans had come down to the river to watch me unload, carry, and reload. They stayed mid-river immediately above the dam until I gave them the thumbs up that I was ready to shove off again.

Now that I've passed several sectors of the Border Patrol, I can say the Del Rio sector is by far the friendliest.

One agent had warned me that below the dam, the Maverick County Diversion Dam, the "river is just a trickle." He wasn't kidding. The power plant west of Eagle Pass sucks off nearly all the flow in a diversion canal. The release into the main channel of the Rio Grande was somewhere between 10 and 20 CFS. 

I was dragging the canoe more than I was paddling it for the first mile, but little by little inflows, most of which I couldn't see, replenished the water supply, and I was able to make some slow progress. 

I saw a man fishing in his underwear late in the day, and I asked him if he could tell me where I was. He said I was nearing Jimenez, but there was one problem I should know about. Not far ahead, rocks blocked the entire river and it might be difficult getting my boat through. 

Sure enough, a mile later the river filled with rock slabs that were difficult to navigate around or over.  I left plenty of canoe paint on this stretch but I made it through fine. Plus, it was beautiful.

I camped on yet another island, though I described it in my river journal as 'woeful,' a mucky mess, made even sloppier during the night by generous rains, which returned again in the morning.

Early the next day, I arrived at yet another dam, this one presumably spanning across from Quemado to Jimenez, but neither town is visible. This dam necessitates another short portage. 

Though the river had more water, it still didn't have much. At one tight drop around a corner, I slammed sideways hard into the river cane and the impact bruised my face. At another blind turn, I was forced to beach on a barely submerged rock in mid-drop, line around a rock column, then jump back into the canoe for the rest of the drop. Few of the drops had sufficient water for a clean run, and the cross currents caused by the rock columns were something I was experiencing for the first time. Currents could change directions half a dozen times in a single rapid. A couple of the rapids merit a Class II rating, but even that would be misleading, suggesting they run easier than they actually do.

I made an early camp at yet another island, this one gorgeous, and I set about the long task of drying all my saturated gear. I thought I was only fifteen miles to Eagle Pass at this site, but the next day, I learned I had grossly miscalculated.

My fourth day down from Acuña was as purposeful a boating day as I've had all trip. I paddled hard from the moment I left camp, turn after turn, and no matter how many miles I paddled, I saw no signs of Eagle Pass/Piedras Negras. Finally, after five hours of steady paddling, I arrived at the spot where the diverted Maverick County water reenters the river, and suddenly I was floating big water, 2,000 CFS or more, creating an entirely different paddling environment than I had been accustomed to at that point. Each drop had sizeable waves, and the power of the current was, at first, a bit overwhelming.

I was relieved to find a Mexican guy fishing not far below that point and I pulled over to chat with him.  He delivered the bad news: I wasn't anywhere near the bridges in Eagle Pass. He guessed if I paddled really fast, I could make it in three hours.

And that's what I did, and he was right. It took exactly three hours. I might have made it in five minutes less, but the Eagle Pass Border Patrol boat sped by twice, each time blasting me with huge waves.  I sensed they enjoyed watching me struggle so much with the first pass that when they came by the second time, they decided to see if they could tip me. 

Eagle Pass/ Piedras Negras sums up for me a fundamental difference in border cities. Every person on the Piedras Negras side waved, and if he was close enough, called out a friendly greeting. I saw five fishermen on the Eagle Pass side. Only one of the five returned my greeting.

Below the second bridge on the Mexican side of the river is an encampment of disquieting squalor. I think of it as "the blanket city."  Dozens of Mexican men who have been deported by the Border Patrol and who lack the funds to return to their hometowns live among trash on the hillside above the river. They enthusiastically cheered as I paddled past, but the sight of their condition was the low point of my trip as of then.

I stayed on the river too late, and had to make due with an abysmal camp among the river cane. The noise of the twin border cities was nearly deafening after so many weeks on the river. 

Immediately across the river, a man, ostensibly from the blanket city, came down to fish, and his behavior was not reassuring. He promptly lit a fire, threw his line in the water, and then angrily began firing rocks into the very area where his line was. Once the fire died, he continued down the shore, heaving rocks into the water.

I can't say this night was a high point, but it was a relief to be below Eagle Pass and about to embark on the section of river I most eagerly awaited, the 135 miles to Laredo.

I knew this stretch would be the most remote stretch this side of the Lower Canyons, and I knew it had rapids.

And with the powerful currents and frequent drops, I knew I could make as good a time as I wished if my supplies should run low.

I really hope Jack and his crew get to make their Tour de Tejas trip, and I'll likely be one of the first guys to ask for a 4th man role. However, getting downriver from Acuña to Eagle Pass was plenty hard work for me in my 15-foot Dagger canoe. I can't imagine trying to get a 34-footer upstream over the myriad of barely submerged rock ledges with flows ranging between 10 and 100 CFS.