La Pesca is a town in Tamaulipas, Mexico, on the Gulf coast about halfway between Matamoros and Tampico, just north of the mouth of the Rio Bravo. As the name might suggest, it's well known for it's sport fishing, both in the Gulf and on the Rio Bravo, but there's also a long sandy beach about 2 kilometers east of town, stretching north from the lighthouse on Punta Piedra. Each year around the Easter week, as many as 50,000 people descend on the town for Spring Break, flooding the hotels and camping on the beach. Outside of Easter week, and the Christmas season, the town and beach can be very uncrowded and sedate, especially off of the weekends.
The state of Tamaulipas has long-term plans to develop La Pesca into an upscale resort area attractive to foreign tourists though these plans have been in the works for a long time and its hard to say when or if they will be accomplished, similar to Quintana Roo's development of Cancun, complete with golf courses and high-end resorts. The good or bad news, depending on your viewpoint, is that those plans are still a long way off, and La Pesca is still fairly rustic, inexpensive, and little known to foreign tourists. For Americans or other tourists coming from the United States looking to try road tripping in Mexico, La Pesca is a great first step, an easy 4 hour drive south from Brownsville, Texas.
