12/5/17
As I said yesterday, if you want to hike in Big Bend you’ve got to get up early and hike at first light. It just gets too hot later in the day. So D+I got up before first light and headed to the Lost Mine Peak trail. Awesome hike! Up the peak (about 1100ft in elevation to 7000ft) we went. Started off with us both puffing like bellows but like anything once you wake up and get the body going it was actually relatively easy going. A mile up the peak and we came across this AMAZING vista across the Chisos mountain range. The sun was just peaking over the mountains and so the colours were gorgeous pinks and oranges. I’m so glad we’d met a lady the day before in Boquillas who told us to do this hike as it is really picturesque.
The hike is through scrubby semi alpine trees/ shrubs on rocks (this park is all rocks!) and it was fairly good terrain for hiking (a bit scree-y in stages which needed a bit of care but otherwise fine). At the top of the mountain we walked along the peak to some more amazing vistas. We came across some other first light hikers from San Antonio and stopped for a quick chat before they descended (and we followed).
Only animals seen on the hike were birds (actually some really vivid blue and some orange ones) and one lone rabbit! Man o man this park is fairly devoid of mammals.. Apparently there are some black bears (< 20) and mountain lions but we saw zilch.
We returned to the lodge to pack up our bags and check out. After check out we headed to the south western part of the park to see the Santa Elena gorge. Really beautiful drive through this part of the park. Lots of boulders, ash deposits and interesting rock formations caused when the volcano erupted. In fact, we saw a sleeping Godzilla, St Pauls cathedral and a snoozing lion!! At the end of the tour through the rock formations you come to the Santa Elena gorge. The gorge is where the Rio Grande has cut through the “rift”. Its interesting, you drive down and all of a sudden this huge cliff rears up from the ground that goes for miles and bang in the middle the Rio Grande has cut its way through causing the Santa Elena gorge. Awesome! We had tried the day prior to organise a rafting trip through the canyon but the water level is so low that rafting is out, and we wanted to raft today (Fri) when the rafting companies aren’t running- so clearly the gods are telling us no rafting!
Anyway, no rafting but we did settle for a Rio Grande swim! Water is not deep at all but is flowing very quickly. D+I sat in the middle of the river (one of us in Mexico and one in US) and let it flow around us. Illegal border crossing D!! (All the signs talk about the fact that if you step into Mexico on any part of the Rio Grande that is not at a designated border crossing you are an illegal!!—I mean really! The water is knee deep and can be easily walked across (maybe 3 mtrs wide!)… At least there isn’t a big arse wall in front of the river—it would totally spoil Big Bend if the govt goes ahead with its wall plan.
On a more positive note; we saw a new mammal today! A Javellina (Have-a-lee-na). Looks a heck of a lot like a pig—even a bit like a warthog. They are ground dwelling herbivores that hang around the campgrounds because they are well irrigated and so plenty of grass! Cute little dudes and another mammal to tick off the list.
Our afternoon ended in a way that no one had planned. On the way out of the park to our sleeping destination (Terlingua ghost town) we got a flat tyre.. Damn it! So for only the second time in my life I used the car jack to jack up the car. Yes there is documented evidence of me standing in the desert putting up the jack!! Fortunately the hire car had a full sized spare as we didn’t puncture the tyre we blew it out! No way would one of those space saver things have saved us this time around. It was bloody hot today in the desert + all three of us took it in turns to get the jack up and the new tire on.. Means our afternoon is now shot because on arrival into Terlingua we found out we needed to drive all the way back to Alpine to replace the tyre. So D+I drove the 160mile round trip to get a new tyre + some dinner.
Day finished with us “cooking” a frozen stir fry on our little stove and M+D heading into town to find a bar (I piked and worked on my blog).