Plomo o Plata? or Paddles?

Posted on July 18, 2011 by Big River Outfitters

Letting his kayak paddle do the talking, 20-year old Martin Rangel, aka, “El Mudo”, (the Mute), held off a furious charge by the Villela Landeros twins to win the Rio Nazas Regata last week. It was a rousing finish to Mexico’s longest and longest running canoe and kayak race. The 48th edition of the 148-km long, 3-day race through the Sierra Madre of Durango State had a smaller field than usual. Just 49, half the usual number, fought for bragging rights, a t-shirt and new carbon fibre paddles donated by the Mexican National Canoe Federation. Paddling hand-me-down fibreglass stilettos build to Olympic specifications by their dads and grand-dads, they raced to maintain a tradition that goes half-way back to the Revolution of 1910, the last time — incidentally — that Mexico suffered insecurity like today’s.

Over 40,000 people have died since President Felipe Calderon took on the nation’s cartels three years ago. And while the violence seems mostly bad guy on bad guy, the climate of lawlessness it generates emboldens common criminals. Kidnapping is a booming business. One of the event organizers paid a $5000 ransom to get his daughter safely back just last year. A few months later a colleague tipped him off to a conversation he’d overheard in a machine shop; they were coming back for him. The family relocated to another city that day.

People whisper of worse. Torture, ritual sacrifice, and acts of depravity to make you cringe. My friend had heard them all. But his organizational efforts continued. In times

The Rio Nazas near Rodeo, Durango features miles of Cypress and beautiful desert mountains

like these — when ghouls wreak horror with impunity — Mexico needs the Rio Nazas Regata and people who fear breaking such traditions more than they fear the risk in maintaining them.

Participants in the Regata think the U.S. needs them too. The Rio Grande — or Rio Bravo as it’s known in Mexico — flows through some of the United States and Mexico’s most challenged cities. Despite shared problems including poverty, epidemic diabetes and the public relations fall-out of Mexico’s drug war, is the time ripe for the birth of a new tradition? El Mudo, the Landeros Twins and a van full of other Nazas racers intend to find out.

In anticipation of October’s 2nd ever Laredos Riofest — what will be the richest canoe and kayak race in Texas history — the Rio Nazas racing community is sending its best to put on a Summer series of paddling demonstrations on both sides of the Border.

Members of Lerdo's "Escuela de Canotaje" head for the water on Day 1

Low-income kids, people suffering from obesity-related disease and/or lower limb impairments are targetted for paddling lessons right along with the weekend warriors who fill either cities’ air-conditioned gyms and schools.

Laredo and Nuevo Laredo have had their difficulties of late. Martial law exists in Nuevo Laredo, and the Texas Department of Transportation – presumably to lessen the adverse impact of the publicity on visitation — recently removed references to Nuevo Laredo from interstate highway signs.

Into this breach step El Mudo and company, along with their fathers and their fathers’ fathers’ battered boats. Article VII of the 1848 Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo, which ended the Mexican-American War, reserves the right of residents of both countries to navigate the river from bank to bank. On both sides of that river people share the same language and many of the same challenges. Given an opportunity to teach them to paddle, the Nazas racing community assumes people on both sides will become paddling aficionados, and ambassasdors for the sport as well.

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Marcelo Range and son, Martin, aka "El Mudo", Campeon del Nazos 2011!

The Landeros Twins and their dad. "Los Cuates" have competed for Mexico around the world.

Mexican kayaks. Take a lickin' and keep on tickin'.

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No Child Left Inside

Posted on April 25, 2011 by Big River Outfitters

Modern man is the result of 2 million years of evolution, only the last 50 of which involved air-conditioning.  So is it outrageous to suggest that human organisms — as perfectly designed as any under the sun — need sun, and fresh air, and vigorous outdoor activity to be healthy and sane?

Makes sense to us.

Which is why we developed a Texas Parks and Wildlife-funded program called “Field Trips to Go!”  FTTG! pays for interdisciplinary teams of Laredo teachers to explore Laredo area nature sites, develop TEKS-aligned lesson plans and then bring their students back to implement those plans.

We specify inter-disciplinary teams because we think nature isn’t just for science field trips.  It’s also where kids can be stimulated  to read more and write better.  As well as to learn math, create great art, and in general have fresh experiences that will help them enjoy more productive, healthier and happier lives.

And if we can find one cross-disciplinary team of teachers from every school in the city who want to design lessons that relate to all of their students, we’ll get the administrative support needed to leave none of them inside.

Learning to swim.  To make your way in the woods. To catch a fish. To handle a pair of binoculars. To cook over a fire.  To sweat under the sun.  To cool off.  To learn to deal with it.  These are critical experiences for growing up.  If you’re a teacher.  If you think the last place a kid should be all day is inside a windowless classroom, then let’s go outside.

For a complete program description to share with your teacher colleagues, go to “events” on our Facebook page and download our invitation to participate in Field Trips to Go!  Print it. Share it with your friends.  And call to tell us when you want to go.

See you on the river!

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Sit-on-top Kayaking: Bargain Passport to Laredo-area Family Adventure

Posted on April 24, 2011 by Big River Outfitters

“There’s nothing to do around here” is the universal kids’ lament.   Motivating yours to think differently is a challenge anywhere.  Particularly if you’re talking about getting them to be more physically active.  All the more so in Laredo, a city with neither forests, beaches nor mountains to help deal with daily highs that average 100 degrees.

So is it a surprise that so many people leave each weekend?  Or spend their time taxiing from mall to movie theatre to the nearest Chuckie Cheese?  Let’s face it.  In Laredo even parents whine “There’s nothing to do around here.”

But just like the kids, they’re wrong.

Big River Outfitters, a kayaking company based riverside at the Rio Grande Plaza Hotel, has seen 300 people walk through its doors in their seven months in business.  Customers walk out into another world that Laredo offers, one that drips with cool shady retreats, local hideaways where you can forget the city surrounds you, and enjoy family-style activities that everyone wants, but which few know how to find.

Here’s Big River Outfitters’ family guide to unlocking Laredo’s water resources.

Buy a two-person sit-on-top kayak and accessories.

Sit-on-top kayaks are behind the surging popularity of kayaking.

They’re super stable, easy to use and highly transportable.  Anyone can paddle them.  Five kayaks (enough for 10 people) stack easily in the back of a pick-up truck, obviating the need for a trailer.  A good two-person boat, paddles, seats and life preservers will set you back about $700 at Academy.  With no gas to guzzle and no moving parts to break, it’s a bargain that buys your family 10 to 20 years of recreational adventure.

Learn to paddle on an enclosed body of water.

  • Casa Blanca Lake State Park

Toilets, picnic benches and covered seating areas are all benefits to be found at Lake Casa Blanca.  Unfortunately jet skiers and power boaters are there too.  The fishing is fair, and the wildlife observation opportunities excellent.

  • Riverbend Park

At least two small lakes offer great nature watching and beginning kayaking opportunities within 200 acres of city-owned land known as Riverbend Park.  The property, a former sand-and-gravel operation near the El Cuatro neighborhood on the city’s Southwest corner, offers an even better answer to “what’s to do around here?”  Get your family involved in a self-help project to polish this little recognized gem.

  • Santa Isabella Creek

15 miles north of town on Mines Road is Santa Isabella Creek.  It’s a cliffy little tributary that offers up to 3/4 mile of paddling before reaching its confluence with the Rio Grande.

You can see all three species of Kingfishers, herons and other birds indicating the presence of fish.  There’s not a few signs of fisherman there too.  Empty beer cans and abandoned lines.  Park nearby at the Hermanos Perez Country Store or on the newly improved dirt road on the north side of Mines road.

Hone your skills and take on the Rio Grande.

A couple of hours of instruction are enough to learn the basics: how to get in and out of the kayak, properly grip the paddle and basic strokes.  Once you and your partner know how to do a self-rescue (boating alone is highly discouraged)  you’re ready to discover the pleasures of floating downstream on your own backyard river, the nation’s 3rd longest, the Rio Grande.

From Amistad Reservoir until it reaches Laredo and Nuevo Laredo, the river meets all health and safety standards. It’s warm, shallow and has a gentle current.  At normal levels it’s a Class I river, with just enough riffles and ledges between languid stretches to practice introductory whitewater techniques like surfing, ferries, peel-outs and eddy turns.

Anyone can paddle on the Rio Grande (navigation for residents of both countries being guaranteed by virtue of the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo.  No permits nor permissions are necessary; only access — something often hard to find in Texas.  The best access points we know are at Father McNaboe Park, Markley Lane, the Jefferson Street Water Plant and Chacon Creek.

Recruit an Expert

A list of Hill Country paddling professionals, as well as courses that will help you to some day be one, are available on line through the American Canoe Association.

In Laredo, Big River Outfitters offers daily outings to teach you the fundamentals of paddling and help you discover Laredo’s under-utilized potential for family-style outdoor adventure.  A  2 1/2 introduction to kayaking, complete with equipment, instruction, guide services and transportation, is $28.   Guided 2 1/2 hour adventures on local rivers and streams costs the same $28 per person with a 3-person minimum.   Tours and introductory classes are offered 5 days/week, from Wednesday through Sunday departing at 9 a.m. and 4 p.m. from the Rio Grande Plaza Hotel.

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Academy Sports and Outdoors’ Community Kayak Races Debuts at Dia del Rio

Posted on November 4, 2010 by Big River Outfitters

Her morning of volunteer trail work done, Linda Perez scuttles on all fours and gingerly transfers her weight into the kayak. But just as the raven-haired ten-year old is nearly settled in, she freezes, squeals and pleads to go back. Fellow Juliette Girl Scouts and her mom urge her to “girl up,” but she scampers to the dock. Never mind that she’d just spent a day demonstrating new mastery of the sport at a day-long outing at Casa Blanca Lake,

“This is the river,” she protests, and everyone knows just what she means.

Local politicians love to say how the Rio Grande unites us. The truth is it terrifies us. Even for those who grew up fishing and swimming in the river, the news from Mexico, the ubiquitous presence of Border Patrol agents, and that unmistakeable earthy whiff of the river at Bridges I and II makes most Laredoans hesitate when it comes to getting in.

So when 32 people paid $30 each to race in the first-ever Academy Sports and Outdoors Community Kayak Races during Dia del Rio last October 16, race organizers were thrilled.

“‘It’s your river; enjoy it!’, preaches Steve Kaczor who’d just devoted 3 months to launch Big River Outfitters, Laredo’s first river tripping service, which organized the event. Offering trips five days a week on the river and Casa Blanca Lake, partnering with the city to create an official Texas Parks and Wildlife Department Paddling Trail, and hosting quarterly kayak races to raise funds for local charities are part of their plans for making Laredo into a year-round center for paddle sports activity.

So is working with Laredo’s newest generation of paddlers. Which is why they chose the annual Dia del Rio “Paso del Indio” trail clean-up to stage the first race. For the first time, hundreds of youth clearing and prepping Laredo’s oldest nature trail could pause from shoveling and raking to survey the river and cheer on the racers. And when their labors were over, they could come down to the water’s edge and try paddling in the company of race organizers and volunteer race marshals.

After huddling with her Juliette friends (“Juliettes” are young girls who pursue traditional scout goals independent of traditional troop meetings), Lynda Perez took to the water again. On the way home, victorious at overcoming her river fears, she pronounced to her mother that “now I can do anything.”

Other victors included Victor Hugo Garcia, whose team won the Laredo Open and a distinctive trademark trophy — designed by Martin High School Art Teacher Jo Ann Sanchez from a kayak paddle. Robert Mlakar and Adrian Perez won the Hospitality Industry Challenge and will rotate possession of their trophy between their respective hotels, the Residence Inn by Marriott and Homewood Suites by Hilton until its time to defend it three months from now at the next quarterly Academy Sports and Outdoors Community Kayak Race scheduled for late January.

Local school teacher Sandra Silva won the Scholastic Scramble, which along with a trophy included a $500 cash award from Sames Ford to be donated to the charity of her choice. St. Jude Childrens’ Research Hospital will be the recipient.

Perhaps the most interesting outcome of all involved Sandra’s husband Xavier. Winning the Civil Service Challenge, which pits Laredo’s firemen against Border Patrol, Police and other state, city and local employees, he designated “Project Cupcake” as the recipient of a $500 award donated by L&F Distributors.

Project Cupcake — race organizers learned — arranges birthday parties for children temporarily residing at Laredo’s Bethany House. Announcement of the award to Project Cupcake’s Director led to a flurry of phone calls. Firemen conferred with Big River Outfitters. Project Cupcake conferred with Bethany House Directors. It appears the Bethany House kids to celebrate their birthdays won’t be dining at McDonald’s. They’ll be picnicking on the water and learning to paddle at Casa Blanca Lake.

So grows paddling in Laredo. A few kids. A few organizations. A few sponsors at a time.

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Coming to Laredo? Get ready to paddle!

Posted on October 28, 2010 by Big River Outfitters

With year-round warm temperatures and reliable flow, good fishing and some of the best bird watching in the continental United States, Laredo, Texas is fast becoming a top paddle sports destination.

Laredo’s city council recently approved a proposition to create an official State Paddling Trail, only the 21st in Texas and the first on the Rio Grande. Community kayak races are a regular quarterly occurrence, and the city is now home to a full-time outfitting company that offers daily tours on the Rio Grande and nearby Casa Blanca Lake State Park.

The sudden growth in the sport owes much to the November 2009 “Laredos RioFest”, a first-time ever binational canoe and kayak race whose $28,000 in cash prizes lured some of the world’s best racers to discover what had been lying in wait directly upstream from Laredo and Nuevo Laredo for years and years.

No one is more surprised than native Laredoans themselves.

“‘I can’t believe it’s so beautiful’, is the first thing people tell us.

“Then comes, ‘I can’t believe it’s legal’”.

It’s with surprise and regret that they usually add, “I can’t believe I’ve lived here all my life ….”

Visitors needn’t have such regrets. Three hours and a bathing suit are all you need to beak away from your conference and explore the unheralded, unexpected beauty that lies directly upstream of Laredo, a Class I/II river with tributaries that beckon, riffles that ruffle and wildlife that will surprise you. Without ever leaving city limits. Surprised? Don’t feel bad. Until a year ago, the folks that lived here didn’t know about it either.

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Kayaking Takes Hold on the Rio Grande

Posted on October 18, 2010 by Big River Outfitters

One year after the first big splash, ripples are still spreading.

It’s Friday night in Laredo, Texas, the biggest inland port in the hemisphere, and 39-year old Carlos Mata, an affable, red-haired, bearish VP of Operations for one of its many trucking firms, is salivating over his computer screen.

“Look at that,” he says.  “You can see right through her skin.”

Indeed.  The object of his passion — a 17’ Souris River Queticao canoe — has no gel coat over it’s translucent Kevlar shell.  Made from the same material as a Border Patrol Officer’s bullet proof vest, it’s strong and gossamer light.  At 44 pounds it’s half the weight of any of his other canoes.  With just one click and $1700 it joins his floating harem.

Carlos Mata, his growing collection of canoes, and slightly larger collection of canoe-mad friends, might be the nerve center of South West Texas canoeing.  Getting together for weekend outings at least once per month, there is no other group of people in the Laredo area so dedicated to long-distance and overnight paddling.  What’s startling is that their fascination with the sport, and the expertise that has them leading multi-day wilderness trips on some of the state’s most remote waterways, are things they never imagined doing before last year’s Laredos RioFest, a 33-mile binational canoe and kayak race that kindled a hunger for river sports in a town where it had been strikingly absent.

And while the second Riofest is postponed until 2011, the impact of that race still ripples across Laredo.  Community Kayak Races — featuring heats for different sectors of the local workforce — are part of the 17th annual October 16 Dia del Rio (see sidebar for details).  The City Council is considering an application to Texas Parks and Wildlife to designate the first ever TPWD Paddling Trail on the Rio Grande.

Carlos and Lex look back and wonder why it all took so long.

“You know,” Carlos says.  “I always loved going to Garner.  I love going to the Frio. I visited Santa Elena Canyon with my parents in 1994 and I thought, ‘I’d like to get into this…’”

Lex too grew up in a household steeped in nature.  But it wasn’t until this past year that they  began immersing their friends in local rivers; channeling their hunting and camping experience into long distance paddle trips.  They loved the solitude and the challenge of rivers like the Pecos and the Dirty Devils.  Places that require days of paddling because once you start in there’s no other way out.   Where weather can be severe, water can be in short supply and aid is a long ways away.

Only one river intimidated them.  The closest one to where they all lived.  The one that had re-ignited all their collective interest in paddling.  For even these die-hards, the stigma of the Rio Grande overwhelmed their own direct experience. It would take the latest ripple on the Laredo paddling scene to get them back out there.

Big River Outfitters is Laredo’s first ever river kayaking outfitter.  Offering tours on the Rio Grande and nearby Casa Blanca Lake, they opened their doors for business at the worst of all possible times, the second week of July when Hurricane Alex had brought catastrophic flooding to the region.

But as soon as flood waters dropped, Carlos and crew were enlisting Big River Outfitters for their biggest assignment to date, turning 13 of their friends onto paddling the same way they had rediscovered it, right there in their backyard, paddling 11 miles from Santa Isabel Creek on Mines Road back to the City.

Though they’re the new guys on the block (to launch the operation owners Eric Ellman and Steve Kaczor relocated from McAllen and Chiriqui, Panama, respectively) Lex tips his hat.

“We always figured, you go down there, something’s going to happen.  But they turned us onto the river.   It can happen.  You can have a good time.  And it doesn’t turn into bullshit.”

Quite the contrary.  Mix a bunch of friends or a whole community that’s starved for something new and different and healthy to do, mix in water, and you get something good.  In the words of the 2010 Laredo Visitors Guide, kayaking continues to be “the latest thing to hit … the Rio Grande and cast a spell on the citizens of two countries.”

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The Summer the River Changed

Posted on September 2, 2010 by Big River Outfitters

We moved to Laredo this July to start a river outfitting company,“Big River Outfitters”, to provide guided kayak excursions on the Rio Grande.  Hurricane Alex arrived in Laredo the same day we did. Many uses along its 2000 mile length leave the river with an average depth of 4′ in Los Dos Laredos.  Soon the river was 40′ deep and one-half mile wide. This was the first change of the summer – the river changed right before our eyes.

We canceled the clients scheduled for our opening weekend and kayaked ourselves, next to 18-wheeler trailers washed from the banks by the flood.  The international bridges were closed, bridges which handle half of all USA-Mexico trade. From our kayaks we watched home evacuations on both sides of the border, National Guard helicopters, and FEMA brigades. Our first customers were Red Cross Volunteers.

The second and most important change of the summer began as Laredoans watched kayaks carrying smiling paddlers along their river most mornings and evenings. “Is that legal?” was a common question from the riverbank. “Yes”, we would explain, according to the 1848 Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo.  Common comments from the kayaks were, “I can’t believe how peaceful this is”, “beautiful”, and “I grew up here, but never thought of enjoying the river this way.” Perceptions about the river changed one paddler at a time.

The Rio Grande may be the most-maligned natural resource in the world.  The media had painted the river as a constant crime scene, a smuggling route for people and plants requiring a heavy border patrol presence. The truth is not so simple. For months we enjoyed the river, observing families picnicking, fishing, or swimming along the banks, birds and dragonflies, fish jumping, snakes swimming, flowers blooming, and dozens of border patrol agents waiting in vain.  Recent filming in Laredo for the series “Border Wars” couldn’t be aired because nothing happened during three days of filming.

Positive stories about the Rio Grande have been frequent since kayaking began in Laredo. National Public Radio, the Wall Street Journal, San Antonio Express, Pro8 TV News, Rio Magazine, Laredo’s Morning Times and Mexico’s El Mañana have helped change perceptions. Big River Outfitter’s facebook page quickly gained 600 fans (and counting). Those who joined us on the river spread the good news. Repeat customers return with new friends. People in the park watch us one day and join us the next.

This brings us to the third change of the summer. Los Dos Laredos and its river have changed us. We expected an uphill battle – starting a new business always is – especially for out-of-towners. The people of Laredo have embraced not only the idea, but they have welcomed us to their community at every turn. Our fellow paddlers, civic leaders, the media, even the border patrol have extended a sincere welcome.  We have been welcomed into local homes, clubs, and businesses. The Rio Grande Plaza Hotel and the Environmental Science Center at Laredo Community College (LCC) have treated us like family.

We couldn’t be more grateful for the embrace of this wonderful community; it has inspired us to overlook the slow start and work tirelessly to overcome long-standing misconceptions about the Rio Grande and its place in the community. Of course the river continues to change, almost daily. Perceptions about the river continue to evolve.  We continue to seek a level of business that can sustain Big River Outfitters beyond our initial 3-month test market. We hope our new organization can measure-up to the big hearts we have encountered to become a long-term member of this community.

Our test market is scheduled to end on Dia del Rio, October 16th. Come out and join us for community kayak races on the Rio Grande. We’ll celebrate the river all morning with three race heats at LCC’s Lamar Bruni Vergara Environmental Science Center. We’ll celebrate the river all night with an awards ceremony, live music and a poolside BBQ beginning at 6pm at the Rio Grande Plaza Club. We hope you’ll celebrate with us… it’s your river, enjoy it…

Paddles to the People!

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