I thought I might have to undergo an adjustment in switching from the mountain bike to the canoe as well as from having company to being alone. I was certainly right about the change in craft. Getting used to being alone took exactly one turn of the river.

Ted Thayer arrived promptly with Tony’s SUV and we were at the river’s edge on the east side of Presidio an hour later. I gave Tony a warm hug and Ted yet another tip.

A confession here: I’ve spent roughly one thousand days piloting my rafts solo. Before I launched from Presidio, I had spent exactly five days solo in a canoe. Putting it another way, I wasn’t an accomplished solo canoeist. OK, I wasn’t even any good at it.

But I didn’t need to be the first couple days floating southeast out of Presidio.

That first day I reached the El Mulato dam (which is actually far upriver from the town of El Mulato), and portaged. Three middle-aged women and a teenage boy came to the river to chat with me. They had driven down from Ojinaga and thought my story of canoeing all the way to the Gulf a bit unlikely.

The next day I passed El Mulato itself and a Mexican man, Ricardo Saenz, called me up to visit with him and see his tiny town. I noticed as I climbed the steep trail up from the river that the residents dumped all their trash over the cliff in the direction of the water, and I had to sidestep numerous broken bottles on the trail itself.

Ricardo was eager to tell me of his life working on ranches in the Bullis Gap and Reagan Canyon. It turned out that what interested him even more was trying to sell me some "coca," or cocaine. I found it strange that a father of seven in his mid-fifties would be in such a business, and I had to disappoint him by not giving him any business.

The rest of that afternoon I had a bad feeling about the area and I resoved to camp on the Texas side for one of the few times this trip.

Late in the day I reached the rapids that the Mexicans called "La Boquita," and found one of the most beautiful stretches of river I’ve ever seen anywhere. The river drops through a number of Class 2 rapids. In beween is a gorgeous sandstone bowl that continues about a third of a mile of the Texas side. In an earlier article I had written that a short stretch of river below Dryden was for my tastes the single prettiest section on the entire river. Well, the sandstone bowl and handful of rapids in the area made me instantly reassess. I camped on the smooth rock ledge about midway down the succession of rapids, no finer camp so far on this long run.

I began the third day by running the next to last of the drops, then carried the last, a tight turn in the river where the entire river piles on to a rock in mid-channel.

Not too many miles later I reached Colorado Canyon. By now I was having to face my limitations in a canoe, particularly with tight right hand turns. On one such rapid a few miles before the Colorado Canyon access, I failed to make the turn and I barrelled into the bank at full speed. At another I barely avoided tipping when I overcompensated trying to start my right turn too quickly.

And then just inside Colorado Canyon, the inevitable happened. While running a simple Class I drop which required a tight right turn in order to avoid the overhanging river cane, I failed to make the cut in time and was swept right into the cane and promptly tipped the canoe.

I’d like to call it a learning experience, but once I got going again, I found that even with more practice, I was doing significantly better turning left than I was turning the other direction. After a near tip a couple drops later, I muttered to myself in frustration, "you’re not any good at this."

I did manage to keep the boat upright through the remainder of the drops on the Colorado Canyon run, though admittedly I was lucky to do so at Ledgerock Rapids.

I was relieved to be in camp that evening, Mexican side about 11 miles upriver from Lajitas.

My fourth day down from Presidio, the language of the river changed from Spanish to English. The few times I had spoken English to anyone along the river were in Presidio, but even there I found switching to Spanish right away brought much better results. However, I wouldn’t need Spanish again all the way to La Linda.

At the landing in Lajitas, I met a remarkably friendly family who offered me a ride up to the Warnock Visitors Center so I could get the permit for the National Park section. The father, Victor Chabaco, an El Paso native who now called New Braunfels home, remarked that he would do whatever it took to help me because "what you’re doing is awfully brave." I assured him it did not require so much courage as it did determination.

Victor and his family waited patiently while David Long called the NPS and figured out what to do about my permit; then they drove me back into town, leaving me at the small general store where I learned they don’t do delivery service to the boat landing. I had to carry $66 in supplies down the hill back to the boat.

The next day, New Year’s Eve, I had plenty of company as I ran Santa Elena Canyon.

Desert Sports had a small group and Big Bend a much larger one. Also, a private party was boating. Fortunately, all of them missed the spectacle of me running Rock Slide without a scout.

I’ve always thought this rapid did not merit its Class IV designation, but then again I had run it before in a raft with a scouting stop. This time my attempt to stop to scout nearly cost me the canoe.

The rapid has changed radically since I last ran it in 1994. Even before I got to the place I planned to pull over to scout, I had to scout what to me was an entirely new entry, a large rock in midriver which the river pours over. Probably it’s always been there but in the past was underwater. I barely missed tipping here and then pulled in towards shore at the gravel bank right before the labyrinth of the Rock Slide. And here’s how I got into trouble.

As I positioned the canoe parallel to shore and got one foot out of the boat, the fast current swept the back of my craft out away from shore, a condition the Desert Sports guide later described as "the splits." In an instant a found myself quickly losing balance and rather than lose the boat, I tried to push off with the leg onshore and found myself teetering hopelessly, one leg in the moving boat, the other in the air.

And while I rocked, the current spun the boat around, so that I was now moving toward the first narrow opening in a canoe somewhere between sideways and backwards.

It took an act of God for me to not only avoid tipping but to right the boat before breeching in that first tight channel. I don’t know how I pulled it off, but that I did changed a lot about the way I viewed my canoeing abilities. I made that first turn, then the second, and then found myself out of position for the really tight third turn, and somehow I stopped the boat in all that current and with the help of one of the largest surges of adrenaline I’ve ever experienced, I managed that final turn.

And so the Rock Slide was behind me. To say I was relieved would be the understatement of my life.

At the end of Santa Elena Canyon, I found myself the object of a number of hikers’ curiosity, and more people snapped my picture than normally do in a single year.

One fellow was quite friendly, and I pulled over to chat with him about the Lower Canyons. He kayaked and rafted, but said he hadn’t run the LC for 27 years. I strongly encouraged him to make another run.

Entering the Great Unknown, I was way behind schedule to rendevous with Hayesy in La Linda so that he could accompany me for the section from there to Amistad Dam. And I didn’t want to keep him waiting in case he’d run out of time and not be able to help me paddle the lake.

So I paddled and paddled, close to thirty miles a day, so that I was in Mariscal Canyon only 48 hours after leaving Santa Elena. I saw no one, nor any traces of anyone. The one notable thing about this lovely stretch is the recent floods have really scoured the river basin. Fine sandy beaches were everywhere.

I had Mariscal Canyon to myself, but I didn’t linger long. I ran Mini Rock Slide and then Tight Squeeze, and then spent a mile staring at the majesty of the canyon walls.

That evening I stayed on the river a little too late and had to settle for a camp on a sandy rise between the river bank and the willow thickets. As I cut through the willow thicket to gather firewood, I came upon a goat trail. As I looked downriver, I saw a Mexican man on a burro approaching.

This was an odd encounter. For one, he almost seemed to be expecting me. There wasn’t even a hint of surprise at seeing me burst out on to the trail. On the other hand, he wasn’t the least bit curious about what I was doing or where I was going. When I told him I was looking for firewood, he pointed toward live mesquite trees in the direction he was going. I told him I wanted dead wood, and he gave me a look that to me suggested, "you gringos have to have everything just right." I followed him down the trail a hundred yards and there he dismounted and began tieing his burro. I said, "Is this where you’re staying?"

He gave me another one of those looks, and patiently replied, "No, this is where the burro is staying." Then he directed me to some dead salt cedar a little further down the trail.

As I gathered wood, he asked how I had arrived, and he looked back in the direction of my "chalupa" but didn’t seem much interested. He began chopping river cane with his machete and feeding it to the burro. He smiled and said, "this is beef steak for my burro."

I had the clear feeling he didn’t want me to hang around until I made a joke which I’m not going to translate. Then he laughed and warmly asked where I was from. I told him Laredo, and he smiled again and switched to perfect English, saying, "you sure speak very good Spanish, Man."

I was moved enough to say "Thank you, Man, and thanks for the firewood."

In the morning I heard him yelling angrily at either his dog or his goats but he never did come down to my camp.

The next day I found a curious scene at Hot Springs. As I approached the NPS patrol plane was circling overhead, and at the springs themselves, two rangers had a group of a dozen or more bathers out of the springs. Ostensibly, the rangers were writing tickets. No one in the group seemed happy, and not a single person waved to me. I could see people had set up a camp on the Mexican side but I couldn’t determine if that was the cause for the ranger citations. And it certainly didn’t look like a scene where a guy would pull over in his canoe and utter, "Hey, what’s up?"

I paddled down to Rio Grande Village and docked so I could go to the phone to call Andy Kurie to tell him (and Hayesy) when to expect me. I got no answer at Andy’s so I phoned Ted Thayer to have him pass along the news. Then I paddled into the first part of Boquillas Canyon and set up camp, talking with a Mexican boy who was fishing for a minute on my way.

The following day I met up with a group of a dozen canoeists just below Rabbit Ears. I had been trailing them for a couple of hours before they pulled over, and I noticed two things. One, they were very competent canoeists, and two, they didn’t know the river. The headwinds were stout this day and I made the second assessment because they were braving the waves in midriver river rather than ferrying along under the river cane out of the wind.

I hadn’t planned on talking much to them, but as a courtesy I asked if they were self-guided since their canoes didn’t bear the names of any of the local companies. Then I asked if they were students, wondering perhaps if they might know some people I know either through my work or my boating.

It turns out they were all the way from Edmonton, Alberta, and the idea that they were Canadians was about the only thing which could have made me pull over.

I loved this group, easily my favorites since the last group of Canadians I met on the river, the French Canadians who rescued me last Christmas. I got the sense right away that I wouldn’t have minded a bit if this group had had to rescue me this year. We talked and then they sent me on my way with a couple beers.

This morning as I paddled the final six miles to La Linda, I came upon a new rapid which is not marked and which necessitates a tight right turn. I noted with some sense of satisfaction how much better my canoeing skills are now than when I began way back in Presidio.

The Canadians pulled in just after I had all my gear up on shore and we had a happy reunion before Andy Kurie drove down and it was time for me to go up to the big house to type this report.

So now Hayesy and I go in the rafts for the next couple of weeks.

I’ve spent the last 12 Christmas Days in the Lower Canyons but this year I missed the trip because I was mountain biking the El Paso to Presidio stretch. Being here, though, about to embark for my favorite section of the river, it feels like Christmas.

And being in the company of Andy and Hayesy, it’s a lot like being home.