We don’t need no stinking boarders

So, a really interesting story . . . .

A couple of weeks ago we went to Boca Chica beach for our weekly decompress session, taking our awesome friend Cindy along with us this time. We turned right when we hit the beach and went to the Rio Grande (South) side of the beach. Both Vivian and I love this place. The arrow in the picture is where we park down there.

Boca Chica from the air

That part of the beach is amazing because of the convergence of the Rio and the Gulf. Just amazing really. The way the water flows, the way the sand keeps changing and of course, all of the activity. There is always somebody down there doing some fishing, both in the river and in the gulf.

We pulled up and there was this guy, swimming across the river, pulling this HUGE net. He had a life-vest on but man was he struggling. The net basically was across the entire Rio and the guy looked like he was about to die.fishing net

Me, being me, says “holy crap, that guy is exhausted”, I reached for a bottle of water, jumped out of the truck and offered it to him.

He starts yelling at me in Spanish and starts walking up the beach. So I’m thinking, “okay, your loss”.

He came back over a couple of minutes later after seeing that I wasn’t following him up the beach. He starts talking to Cindy who is fluent in Spanish. Turns out he thought I was border patrol trying to trick him or something. She assured him that we weren’t and were just trying to help. The guy gladly took the water and started drinking. He was speaking so fast from all of the adrenalin that even Cindy had a hard time following what he was saying, he was so thankful.

thumbs upSo here is the funny part, he leaves to go and swim back to Mexico, tucks the water under his life jacket and makes the swim against the strong current. He finally gets to the other side, rests a bit, stands up and yells at us. Once he sees us looking, he pulls the water from his life jacket, holds it up, and gives us a HUGE thumbs up.

It was cool, made me feel good . . . but it gets better.

He then kicked his head back, held the water to his lips and started guzzling what was left, with the sun framing the entire image for us.coke

 

It was kinda crazy, made me think of this, really, it did!

We hung out there for a while, picked up and headed to a semi-secret spot on the North side of the park, saw amazing sea life over there, watched the dolphins, watched ships come into port and took some amazing pictures, the best of the day being taken by Cindy below.boat and sun

What is not to absolutely love about this place?

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