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Island Event Photos & Design Studios  
1004 padre blvd , South Padre Island.956-371-3339
Photography, Web design, hosting and marketing services for the island and beyond. Also now offering in studio audio, video production services.  

Of the attractions in Brownsville, we sampled only two: the splendid Gladys Porter Zoo, opened in 1979, which is easily found, clean, cageless (except for a few members of the monkey family) and small enough for children to enjoy without tiring, and a fine eating place, Leonardo's Fiesta Restaurant & Meeting Place. This is a friendly family-run enterprise (the kind described in guidebooks as ''locally popular'') that is festooned with fanciful paper cutouts and serves Mexican specialties. It is all but impossible to spend more than $12 for an adult's meal or $5 for a child's.

Not much farther than Brownsville and Matamoros from South Padre are the farming centers of Edinburg and Pharr, with roadside stands that sell Texas grapefruit and other produce. At Pharr we bought several sacks of 12 juicy grapefruit at $2.50 a sack.

The Padre Island National Seashore, dedicated in 1968, has its southern terminus just north of South Padre Island, and stretches north to the Corpus Christi area, but it is accessible from the south these days only to the most intrepid. The road into its southern end was torn up by the hurricane, and only vehicles with four-wheel drive should be used to examine the flora and fauna and cope with the cuts made in the beach by the hurricane. The seashore's main entrance, major attractions and camping grounds are all at its northern end.

Because all of Padre Island was so remote for so many decades - it was run by a succession of land and cattle barons who held dubious title to the territory - it has its share of legends of pirate treasure and Spanish galleons wrecked by long-ago storms. But evidence of such lore is confined almost entirely to the travel booklets at the hotels.

What South Padre Island offers is quiet family vacationing in a community that its promoters boast will never become another Miami Beach. Given the national seashore as a permanent northern barrier, its capacity for growth is limited. There are vacant lots that would accommodate more hotels, restaurants and condominiums, but for the moment South Padre Island is a resort with a long way to go before it becomes truly crowded.

For a family in search of winter warmth (the temperatures usually match those in southern Florida, which means they are not always as tropical as the brochures proclaim) with prices at a generally lower altitude than those in Florida, and with a heady admixture of the Mexican, South Padre may be the answer.