Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Hunter's Campfire El Cenizo to Salineno TX

Good reading and pics. Brings back some memories.
I grew up down by McAllen but fished Falcon a bunch.
In 89 we were fishing the submerged town old Zapata and just slowly going along the Mexican side.
We turned into a cove and saw a van and a boat with 5 or 6 guys.
Couple guys had rifles and waved at us to turnaround.
Which we did, fired up the outboard and put some distance before resuming fishing.
Seen the green jays, and probably what you call brown jay.
Every time we had a hurricane come through the animal life changed. Different birds, monkeys, lizards and so on.
Last trip in 2018 we were going to see the old Spanish mission south of Mission, but the border patrol fellas said "not a good idea".

Yep, though of late I’ve been a Tory, San Patricio Irish on the Mexican side, we already have more’n enough people wanting to be the good guys 🙂

I'll make sure to aim well high above your head and let you capture me. You can find me wounded under a shade tree. ;-)

To close out the thread, Salineno was where I got the text from the Hispanic family that had stopped to pick up my wallet on the highway 40 miles back.

I’ve been living and working for the past 35+ years in South Texas, 90% Hispanic. This ain’t California or New Mexico, being White here ain’t held against you, might even accord a degree of social status. They don’t check the “Hispanic” box, it’s “White-Hispanic” irrespective of skin color (I’m “White-Non Hispanic”). Most every Hispanic family here proudly claims a degree of Spanish ancestry, and Ancestry.com bears em out, it’s true, again irrespective of skin color. Race-relations as a whole are better in South Texas than anywhere else I’ve been.

Another thing is they tend to respect teachers ( even if their own kids cut school a lot ). The teacher ID in my dropped wallet prob’ly didn’t hurt any although that family was so nice they prob’ly woulda gone above and beyond as they did anyway.

Back to the trip: It woulda been an hour lost out of the day backtracking 30 miles to retrieve my wallet and then turn around again to continue on downriver to Roma (population 12,000). Roma is a typically quiet Border town on a high bluff (the “Cliffs of Roma”, a designated bird watching location) from where you can look directly down on the Cartel hell of Cuidad Miguel Aleman (population 20,000) just across the river. This is where the head of the Mexican Detective investigating the Falcon Lake killing was left in a suitcase outside the police station.

I still had enough daylight left to see Roma and maybe the hand-drawn ferry across the Rio Grande further down at Los Ebanos. My phone however told me the cold front was arriving in San Antonio sooner than predicted and I had foolishly left pipes undripped back home.

From Zapata I returned directly north up Hwy 16, 200 miles of mostly two lane highway across mostly flat South Texas brush country, a small town every 30-50 miles.

Hebbronville (population 5,000), 50 miles up from Zapata has its own vulture colony right in town: the abandoned and largely windowless three story Hotel Viggo. A cloud of maybe 30 vulture circling low overhead.





At least they were all turkey vultures, not black vultures which can be horrific on newborn or otherwise downed livestock. This bunch was gathering to roost, but all those windowless “caves” gotta be ideal for nesting pairs. All them buzzards right in town gotta be pizzing folks off, I have no idea what’s going on there, it’s a designated historic landmark so maybe they can’t demolish it.

Apart from that, not much of note. This is what it looks like almost clear to San Antonio. Even South Texas can look nice at sunset in January, just don’t come here in August 🙂



I made it back to San Antonio after dark and maybe 50 degrees colder, just in time before the freezing rain and car wrecks accumulated. The faucet I was worried about was nearly clogged up with ice already when I turned it open.

Adios Senor Mike! Another good post.