SOUTH PADRE ISLAND, TX

From: richard@West.Sun.COM (Richard M. Mathews)

  SOUTH PADRE ISLAND is located at the extreme southernmost tip of Texas,
  on the Gulf of Mexico.  A narrow strip of sand approximately 1/2 mile
  wide, it consists of the Town of South Padre Island and a hundred miles
  of windswept ocean, sand hills, and sea oat grass.  It can be reached by
  car via the Queen Isabela Causeway (the longest bridge in Texas at 2 miles)
  across Laguna Madre from the town of Port Isabel.  Nearby airports are
  Harlingen (Valley International), located 40 miles away, and Brownsville
  (located about 25 miles away).  Visitors from Dallas/Austin/San Antonio
  generally drive down Interstate 37 south from San Antonio to just outside
  of Corpus Christi, where they pick up U.S. Hwy 77 south.  Mileage from
  Austin:  about 400 miles.  It is about 2.5 hours from Corpus Christi.
  The official nude beach is about 8.5 miles north of town off of Route
  100, the main road on the Island.

  Report:  From all the good things I had heard about So. Padre Is., I had
  expected a tropical paradise akin to Cancun or Hawaii.  Unfortunately,
  its really a desert island with a small town on the extreme southern end
  that is more like Oxnard or Port Hueneme, California than Hawaii.  The
  best description is "beachy/funky."   The people there were generally
  working class/middle class (as opposed to an international jet-set
  crowd), and I had the distinct impression that it catered to college
  kids and the Spring Break people.

  The nude beach is nice, despite the high number of jellyfish and man o'
  wars that had washed up on the broad white-sand beach.  Its pretty much
  an official nude beach, and when the sun was out was great for sunning (I
  avoided the heavy surf and water due to the jellyfish, though).  Hardly
  anyone else was there.

  South Padre Island is marginally nicer than, say, Corpus Christi, but
  the question is this:  is it 5 hours nicer?  (its 2.5 more hours past
  Corpus, more or less).  And the answer that Jane and I came to was, Not
  Really.  Compared to Florida, or even California, its not as nice -- very
  "beachy-scuzzy", and the general crowd that was there was kinda, er,
  funky.  Not as weird or as scuzzy as Venice Beach in SoCal, but still
  disconcerting for "the premiere beach of Texas."  Actually, its only
  3 hours to Cancun by air ... hmmm .....  :-) On the other hand, it IS
  American/Texan, and it is accessable, and it DOES tolerate a gen-u-ine
  nude beach with no hassles at all.

  A qualified recommendation, to be sure, but an honest one.  Its a fine
  place to go, but don't expect Hawaii or Cancun or Santa Barbara or
  Redondo Beach or ....

  Weather reports for the area can be found at
|   http://www.princeton.edu/cgi-bin/Webweather/ww?city=bro

  	[Original from Alan R. Weiss <alanw@pets.sps.mot.com>]