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Island Event Photos & Design Studios  
1004 padre blvd , South Padre Island.956-371-3339
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Rates for fishing boats range from $8 a half-day, including bait and tackle, for party boats carrying 20 to 25, to $40 a day and upward for charter vessels with only a few passengers. Fishing from the pier is $1 a day. Fishing licenses are required for anyone aged 17 to 64, but there is a special three-day license at $1.25 for outof-state residents.

Because the resort is so new, accommodations are uniformly modern and comfortable. There are 2,000 rental units at South Padre, with 1,000 more expected next year. The largest and most elaborate are the Bahia Mar (400 units), the Hilton Hotel and Condominiums (276), the Holiday Inn (150) and the Tiki Condominium and Motel (144.) In addition, more than 40 other apartment and condominium complexes are available to vacationers, with housekeeping arrangements that include equipped kitchens, and at prices that are relatively moderate.

We chose the Tiki because it was the only one of the larger places we had checked that had three-bedroom, two-bath condominium apartments that could house our party of eight in a single unit. The price quoted was $87.50 a night, plus a 7 percent state and city occupancy tax. A few days before we left on our trip, the Tiki advised us that all its three-bedroom units would be occupied by their owners over the holiday period (every apartment there is privately owned, and the availability of each is contingent on the plans of the owner). But we were offered a two-bedroom, two-bath unit at $82.50 a night, plus the 7 percent tax, ''because of any inconvenience to you.''

For our family, losing one bedroom meant that two of us had to sleep on a sofa bed in the living room, but the inconvenience was minimal. The apartment was spacious and clean and wholly livable. Like all the major hotels at South Padre, the Tiki faces the Gulf of Mexico; it has two heated pools, a sauna, a laundry room and the kind of Polynesian-style restaurant that features sarong-clad waitresses, flaming appetizers and tiny umbrellas in the mixed drinks.

It is also one of the best restaurants at South Padre, at $15 to $20 a person for adults, drink and tip included, and $3.45 to $5.95 for children's entrees. All of South Padre's large hotels have restaurants, but we sampled only one aside from the Tiki, the Holiday Inn, where the prices were comparable and the meal less satisfying.

Condominium living allows for preparing meals, of course, and there was no problem marketing for breakfast and lunch every day. There are several convenience stores in South Padre, but no full-scale supermarkets, so cooking an ambitious dinner would pose difficulties. We ate our dinners out.

If the beach, the pool and the fishing should pall, excursions can be rewarding. One daylong outing that we enjoyed involved visits to Brownsville, a bustling bilingual border city, and its sister community, Matamoros, Mexico. The drive from South Padre to Brownsville takes less than an hour.

To get from Brownsville to Matamoros, the traveler can cross the narrow Rio Grande by private car, on foot (the way we did it) or by van on one of the daily excursions offered by South Padre's large hotels. The international crossing, the Friendship Bridge, is one of the most casual anywhere; Mexican women come into Brownsville to shop for groceries, passing Americans on their way to Matamoros, a dusty city with a large public market housing curio shops that sell ceramics, jewlery and fabrics at flexible prices (bargaining is expected and frantic) as well as duty-free liquor.

Nearer the bridge, several blocks from the market, is a retail outlet of FONART (Fondo Nacional para el Fomento de las Artesanias), an agency of the Mexican Government that sells a variety of authentic Mexican folk crafts, superior in quality to those at the market and with far more variety.

Prices at FONART range from less than a dollar for tiny items to more than $100 for jewelry and large objects. Our purchases included a hand-painted gourd with traditional Mexican design at $3.49 and a hand-embroidered girl's blouse at $7. We considered, and rejected because of the luggage problem, a large ceramic dog at $50, and admired a variety of onyxware including an ash tray at $5 that was superior to and half as expensive as similar ones we have seen in the United States. We enjoyed the bedlam at the market, but preferred the merchandise at FONART.

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