“Most of them have outdoor seating anyway-it’s been that way forever,” she says. to 11 a.m., successfully lured hungry visitors to eat lunch at the River Walk’s restaurants after their excursions. She says her hours of operation, from 8 a.m. After arranging permissions with GO RIO Cruises, the city, and the Tobin Center for the Performing Arts, which owns one of only two boat launches on the stretch, Neal was given six weekends to help paddlers hit the water. She found her solution when she called Sarah Neal, who owns Mission Adventure Tours, the sole paddling outfitter with an active permit to operate on the San Antonio River. The initial idea came from Maggie Thompson, SARWA’s executive director, who was looking for a way to bring business back to the River Walk’s struggling shops and restaurants. But with depleted river traffic because of COVID-19, the San Antonio River Walk Association (SARWA) received permission from the city to give a limited number of canoers and kayakers the rare opportunity to paddle the 3.2-mile downtown section on weekends in October and November. Though the stretch that runs through the city center is no stranger to tour boats, tossed beer cans, and an occasional drunk swimmer, it has been off-limits to paddlers for years. The San Antonio River is narrow and navigable only at certain water levels, but Harras’s main obstacle was always the downtown section of the river. He tried in vain for years to plan a race along the San Antonio River that would mirror the Texas Water Safari, which wends 260 miles along the San Marcos River to the Guadalupe and, eventually, into San Antonio Bay.

For my travel companion, veteran Texas paddler John Mark Harras, paddling the River Walk meant fulfilling a longtime dream. Gone were the noisy crowds packed onto barges and shuffling along sidewalks-only a few cigarette smokers and dog walkers looked on with amusement at the unusual sight of our boats.

On a cool morning in October, I got a new perspective from inches above the waterline, where I sat in my canoe. Most of my memories of the San Antonio River Walk are colorful, like the umbrellas on Casa Rio’s patio, and hazy, like the IPAs I’ve sipped while watching tourists trudge along the water’s edge. Discover the best things to eat, drink, and do in San Antonio with our expertly curated city guides.

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