January 31, 2011 in Texas

We left our new dear friends, Gary and Pam, after 2 weeks and headed south to Harlingen, Tx, where we met Gary and Ava who live in this lovely home on the left.  They are avid bird watchers, with a registered bird sancuary in their back yard and also campers with a beautiful 5th Wheel package.  With just a short 2 hour visit, they headed west on a mission trip for 2 weeks, leaving their home in our watchful care.

Here is a pic of their living room which is quite comfortable.  We had no trouble settling in for 2 weeks.

Harlingen is just above Brownsville, Tx which is on the Mexican border and the Rio Grande River.  It is quite a bird mecca where unusual birds migrate to for a short season.  The picture below shows about 7  large birds called Chachalaca (I call them chicken birds because they strut like a small chicken) which live in this back yard year round.  Paul has been feeding them each a.m. and they flock to the feeder as soon as he leaves.  Hope you can see them, they are big.  The owner also cuts oranges in half and sticks them on the fence for the birds eating pleasure.  It is fun to watch them devour the food quickly.

After our bird feeding adventure, we headed south this a.m. to Brownsville, especially to see the border.  Everyone here has told us not to go into Mexico because the drug cartels are fighting it out with some Americans being catch in the middle, esp in northern Mexico.  On our way down, we did get kinda lost in a Mexican  populated surburb and came across this bakery, so we had to check it out.   No one spoke English but we got what we wanted.  You can see Paul having a great time choosing his desserts.

After I pulled him out of this great smelling bakery, we headed on down the see the border crossing.  There were at least 5 bridges  with large inspection station at each one.  The US is currently building about a 15-20' iron gate wall along the river in Brownsville.  We spoke with a border control cop who said that the Mexicans can scale the wall, like a monkey and be over in seconds.  WOW!  then why the wall.  He said there are 30-50 trying everyday just in this area trying to get to the USA and that probably half the town of Brownsville are illegals.
Here are some pics that show what we saw.

men working on wall

wall from a distance

a finished section of wall

Border Patrol watching river