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TRAVEL BLOG ENTRY
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“Santa Fe reveals itself in the plain below snow covered mountains.. but where is the colour?” |
Santa Fe reveals itself in a plain below snow covered mountains but hey where is all the colour? We had in mind a very colourful place with interesting adobe houses. The houses are certainly interesting but they are all the same colour, a taupe/muddy finish. Combined with the bare winter season trees this creates a feeling of monotony and "deadness"; lacking the excitement and interest we had been expecting.
The drive here from Telluride had been fantastic.. empty roads through dramatic and interesting snow covered landscapes. We found our Santa Fe casita easily and were very pleased that it was both spacious and comfortable. Susan our host had left us a selection of welcoming items in the fridge too, which made our first evening and the next morning much easier.
After visiting Walmart for some shopping (the prices are just fantastic!) we stocked up on groceries for the week and then planned our itinerary. We would go skiing at the Santa Fe fields, visit the Indian ruins and cave dwellings at Bandalier, go to the "secret" nuclear research center of Los Alamos, take a drive down the "Turquoise Trail" to the villages of Los Cerrillos and Madrid, see the town center and also do some relaxing at our Casita.
Well....the skiing trip was a disaster! At the start of the 16 mile journey uphill our fuel gauge said 87 miles to empty. After about 12 miles it said "oops low fuel warning" ....emergency... emergency. We crawled to the top of the hill with our hearts in our mouths and somehow made it without coughing to a halt and bringing a whole conga line of weekend skiers to a standstill.
The resort was quite basic and very, very busy. Huge queue for ski hire, which we joined to only find out that they did not actually hire out ski pants.End of game...
We managed to secure a jerry can of fuel and headed back into town with our tails between our legs, and wiser for the experience as well.
The trip to Bandalier and Los Alamos was great and we did not run out of petrol either.The Cave like dwellings in the volcanic "Tuffy" earth were fascinating and the Los Alamos Bradbury "Nuclear" Museum was excellent. It's a bit spooky in Los Alamos. They stop you on the way in and I'm sure that we were filmed everywhere we drove in this secretive place. In which case they would have filmed me driving the wrong way up the road into the oncoming traffic at one stage. First time(I promise !!!)
Los Cerrillos was like a wild west movie set ( only it was really for real !) and Madrid an "arty" hippy style small town in the middle of nowhere whose latest claim to fame is a cafe setting for the movie "Wild Hogs" with John Travolta. Both were interesting and refreshing diversions.
Leaving Santa Fe today we drove to Albuquerque, picked up Michaels guitar from 'Grandmas' and wished we had allowed the time to explore this much bigger city. Set below a snow capped mountain, Albuquerque actually looks really interesting and probably appeals to us more than its more hyped northern sister, Santa Fe.
Now we are waiting in the lounge at LAX and preparing for the long journey back to Oz. The fight leaves at midnight. Hopefully we will sleep at least a little???
previous travel blog entry
Rosecart says:
Welcome home. What a journey! I just wanted to say that reading your comments about skiing in Colorado reminded me that I never skied again after a week-end on Copper Mountain many years ago. I reckoned it would never be that good again. Thanks for the memory.