Cinnabar, a bright red and toxic ore of mercury that was once used as a pigment, was extracted from Big Bend until 1946. The Mexican laborers had a vibrant community whose most tangible evidence today is found in the town cemetery. Small Mexican shrines, simple wooden crosses and faded plastic flowers adorn the graves. It’s said that on November 1st each year, Mexico's Day of the Dead, the graveside festivities in this cemetery are quite a sight. Outside the cemetery, many of the ruined adobe buildings have been used as foundations for modern structures. The town of Terlingua is largelymade up of adobe buildings that have fantastic modern wings and second stories built onto them. Along with the unusual architecture that is based in these ruins, there is a funky flare to this remote little outpost. La Posada Milagro is a small Mexican rooming house and restaurant with a wonderful deck and fabulous Mexican food. It’s a gathering place where the locals come for coffee each morning, and backpacking and cycling tourists of all kinds enjoy a stopover of a night or two. Around town, artists with a flair for whimsy have erected metal sculptures of bugs and motorcycles, and one resident has remodeled his home to resemble a three-masted ship bearing the name "Passing Wind." At the opposite end of Big Bend National Park, on the far eastern side, the Rio Grande Village RV Park is nearly adjacent to a U.S./Mexico border crossing that takes visitors into another culture and another world south—or technically east—of the border. With passports in hand, we nodded to the U.S. border patrol agent as we slipped through the very modern building at the border and emerged on a dirt trail on the other side. Following the trail downhill a short distance, we soon caught sight of the Rio Grande to our left. The Rio Grande River is known to Mexicans as the Rio Bravo, and when we walked down to its banks we could see a few men standing on a bluff on the other side. We noticed a man shoving a row boat off of the opposite shore, and in no time he was landing his boat right next to us. He motioned for us to get in, and we realized that this was the ferry that takes visitors from one side of the river—and border—to the other. We hopped in, and as we snapped photos of our unique transportation and courier, the rich, deep sounds of a man singing Mexican folk songs from up on the bluff echoed off the Sierra del Carmen mountains. What a classic and warm Mexican welcome! Our ferry operator took us to a folding table where we paid $5 for our round-trip boat ride and were given a Mexican guide to take us to town. We were offered the use of a burro, and although that looked like fun, we opted instead to walk to the village alongside our guide, Fermín, and converse with him in Spanish as best we could. He oversaw our customs and immigration procedures in a small trailer in town where a friendly Mexican customs official in uniform reviewed our passports. Then we were released into the sleepy village to wander at will.
Boats like this ferry visitors across the Rio Grande between the U.S. and Mexico.
Our guide stayed in the background as we strolled down the dusty streets, and we watched wide eyed as two men on horseback rode into town, stirring up the dust around them, as if arriving right out of a movie. We chatted with a little girl and boy who ran barefoot in the street and talked briefly with an 85-year-old man in a wheel chair who played us a few tunes on his guitar in exchange for a tip in his hat on the ground. After taking us past the health care center and the pretty village church and showing us the solar power system that brings electricity to this remote Mexican settlement, Fermín brought us back into the heart of town. We stopped in a small gift shop and then took a table on the deck of the José Falcón Restaurant, a cute little bistro that was an ideal spot for a delicious Mexican lunch with Coronas while looking out across the Rio Grande. Boquillas del Carmen has been a popular destination for visitors to Big Bend National Park for eons, but the once casual border crossing was closed after 9/11 and reopened only in the last few years. The locals depend on the small income they derive from tourists who cross the border to visit their town for a day, and the owner of José Falcón spoke warmly of the packed house his restaurant had enjoyed on Christmas Eve and Christmas Day.
12 COAST TO COAST FALL 2016
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