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The noise eventually stopped at 5am. At
8am I awoke and decided that I should leave. As
I packed my stuff into the trunk of my car the
guy, who owned the car three up from mine, was
showing the Motel manager the window which
someone had put through in order to break into
his car. This meant it was handy for me to get
my two dollar key deposit back.
I decided to give Albuquerque a look-see.
So I went down town and eventually ended up
having breakfast in the Old
Town district, at The Cafe on
Church Street. The food was great. However,
whilst eating, I realised that the further East
I drive the more cheese and chili finds its way
into my food and the greater the number of
religious shows on the TV and radio.
Statisticians could probably turn this into some
serious research dollars! Note: This is not
unlike the ratio of lard to food that you get on
your plate as you work your way further North in
the UK.
By the time I finished exploring the city
I had come to the conclusion that I must have
happened upon Albuquerque's single worst motel.
This is not atypical for me. Hopefully they were
just having a bad night.
The other thing is that a number of the
sculptures and public spaces, in the city
proper, feel like they were designed and built
by a child with no concept of scale. For
example, the place that I had eaten in last
night was a huge space with teeny tables and
this open kitchen that must have been at least
fifty meters long!
After that it was a fairly brief trip
from Albuquerque to Santa Fe. The entire Santa
Fe county closely monitors and controls its city
planning, design and building. I have even heard
that you are only allowed to paint your home in
one of twenty-four authorised sandy tones. The
quote that had my hopes so high was, "Santa Fe
is not so much a place as a
mood." This is a load
of old twolup. It is actually quite sterile,
safe and monotonously dull. Everything looks the
same and is pristinely maintained. Even
buildings dating from the early 1900s, which
would have had a colonial look, have pseudo 17th
century adobe style façades. The art that
I read so much about was also less than
thrilling. There is this particularly popular
style of corporate art here, in the US, that
involves loads of pastel shades mixed up with a
handful of Indian icons. Such art just leaves me
cold. And that was just about all that I saw in
Sante Fe. I know, cute contrivances are liked by
most people, which is why this place is so
popular and so praised by the media. I am
willing to bet that what I saw was largely the
result of tourism. Personally, Camon Street
looked like the Sante Fe I had read about; A
place where real artists hang-out and shoot the
breaze.
All in all, I preferred Taos and the
Pueblos on the road to Los Alamos. These have
similar architecture to Santa Fe, but are
totally authentic, many still have unpathed
courtyards complete with a huge wooden gate and
a scattering of community buildings. I would go
to Taos again. I would give Santa Fe a miss.
Then there is Los Alamos, which has to
win the award for the government city with the
best location. It sits on top of huge mesas
looking out over the Rio Grande
Valley. This place, with street
names like "Oppenheimer Drive", was the WWII
secret city where the Manhattan Project was
developed. The Los Alamos Scientific Laboratory
is still actively involved in numerous critical
nuclear projects.
I had initially intended to head South
from Taos to "the
other" Las Vegas. But I got very
lost and ended up doubling back to Sante Fe
before taking the 285 straight to Roswell, home
of the 1947 UFO crash site. It was a long drive
that took me across huge expanses of grassy
plains (yes, they eventually got very boring).
But I can see why this would be a good place for
alien abductions. The entire Taos to Roswell run
took only one full tank of petrol. Panick was
setting in as the fuel gauge started to read
empty. It had been a long time between road
signs. So I only had my best guess as to how
close I was to the city. The CD player switched
to the opening track of Zooropa as the fog
parted to reveal first an eerie yellow glow and
then the city lights which produced it. I had no
idea this place would be so big!
Tonight's motel is (funnily enough) a set
of mock 17th century adobe buildings. No of sign
my friends from last night. Tonight I can sleep
well. Tomorrow, I will take a gander at the real
Roswell.
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