Dec 22, 2019
We woke up to a beautiful day, high 60’s, sunny skies, forecasted to rise to the high 70’s by Christmas. Our original plan had us leaving the United States by the end of November and here it was Dec 22 and we were finally ready to go to Mexico! Not quite. We had delayed so long that it was now just three days before Christmas, the weather was great, forecasted to get better and we were just 70 miles from South Padre Island, one of the more famous beaches in the US. Did we want to spend Christmas struggling to get around in a new country or take the opportunity to enjoy some time by the Gulf of Mexico? Most likely once we entered Mexico we might not get to the ocean again for a few months so we decided to go to the beach instead!
So we drove down to South Padre Island and paid $48 for a night at Andy Bowie campground on South Padre Island. Coming over the bridge to South Padre the island looked a lot like Florida to me while Holly though it reminded her of Cancun with its stretch of high rise hotels. Andy Bowie was next to the beach, only a couple of minutes walk down a path and while the beach was a little narrow with no kids to play with we had a nice time anyway. The downside of Andy Bowie is that the restrooms and showers were subpar, about what you might see at a poor county park and worse yet the water was not very hot. Even worse there was no wifi. Really $48 a night, with lukewarm water and no wifi? At least the weather was good and the beach was nice.
The process of showering, cleaning up, making dinner, eating and washing dishes took us several hours and watching A Nightmare before Christmas took us all the way to bedtime.