The
first stretch of the drive ran along the Rio Grande, which was the border
between the US and Mexico. It was hard to see the river from the car, but
in the first picture, most of what you see is in Mexico. This was the killer drive day! There were 560 miles between El Paso and
San Antonio and the weather was not looking good. We started off fairly
early and thought we'd see how it went. Seeing as how it was a relatively
early night last night, we were feeling okay, so we put on some tunes and headed
across Texas. We took a decision not to stop for lunch today as there was
too much driving to be done. The
first stretch of the drive ran along the Rio Grande, which was the border
between the US and Mexico. It was hard to see the river from the car, but
in the first picture, most of what you see is in Mexico.
A little way outside of El Paso there was a border patrol station where all
cars had to stop in order to make sure there were no illegal immigrants. I
got my passport ready, Chris had his drivers license. However the cop told
Chris that although he lived and worked here he still had to carry his
passport. So, luckily he gave us a quick grilling, warning of the
consequences and eventually let us go on the proviso that Chris had his passport
sent down to him ASAP. 
After
that we did the drive across what the guidebook describes as "flat"
Texas. As you can see from these pictures, they've never been! We
basically climbed across mountains until just outside San Antonio where we plummeted
into the city. The CB again caused much amusement today, once more the
truckers had pinpoint accuracy on the location of various "bears" and
"smokies" and today we learned a new one - "Evil Kenivel has just
joined Westbound," we're assuming that was a motorcycle cop and not the
infamous dead stunt man.
We arrived in San Antonio early evening, which isn't bad considering we lost an hour through the timezone! So, we found a motel and decided to explore San Antonio. All in all the drive only took about 7 hours which, if you take an average, means we probably weren't doing the speed limit.
The city was beautiful. We stopped for a drink before descending a
level onto the River Walk. This is an area where there are bars and
restaurants around a maze of the river forming basically a square. Today
we were both suffering from some bug and were absolutely frozen. Therefore
we opted for an outside table by the river! The reason however was that
the restaurant provides you with ponchos to wear, so we thought that would be
cool. 
Here's a picture
of America's finest wondering why there was a strange bloke with an English
accent wearing a poncho in downtown San Antonio! I just wish that I had my
hat and a cigar!
Unfortunately the flash was not behaving and the rest of the photos of the Riverwalk did not come out. We even tried to get one of the Alamo which we accidentally stumbled upon having forgotten what we came to see!