New Mexico - Santa Fe

Sunday August 19
Just as we thought we were finally going to get away from Santa Fe and get some miles in, we came across the Flea Market. Well, this market was better and less expensive than the Indian Market in my estimation. It was so hot that I could hardly think to purchase anything but somehow I soldiered on and made some purchases. Ken was not as enthusiastic as I was and went back to the van for a nap. Our next arty destination was Taos, NM. It has houses, restaurants and retail establishments made to look hacienda style (little adobe houses), the same as Santa Fe. I visited the same quilt shop where Doris and Jan had been last fall and purchased some cloth for me. That was fun. We ended our Taos experience by having a picnic in Kit Carson Park.

We took a scenic roadway out of town towards the I - 25. The road was very windy and climbed upwards to over 9000 feet. It was very scenic with escarpments. We were glad we had gone this way even though it seemed to take longer. We drove to Pueblo, Colorado, which is just south of Colorado Springs. The landscape is looking very prairie like.


Saturday August 18
We again were in the situation where we had to do our laundry. Not anything you want to spend any time on during a holiday. We did manage to hang out at the campground until lunch.

We knew parking would be a special problem downtown Santa Fe today so we first went down Canyon Road, another area fine art galleries. I was particularly interested in one gallery called the Jane Sauer Thirteen Moons Gallery which often has fibre art exhibits, in fact this gallery is the main reason I wanted to come to Santa Fe.


Turned out, however, that the whole town is made of art galleries and there is art everywhere, high end art. The booths for the Indian Market took up the streets around the central park plus other side streets. People loving Native art would have thought they were in heaven - jewellery, paintings, sculpture, rugs, weaving, leather work, etc. Ken left me to my own devices for an hour or so. He went to the library to catch up on world news.







That night we went to the Whole Food Market to stock up on food for the rest of the trip to Saskatchewan. There were so many delicious samples put out to try that we didn't even need to eat supper after.

Texas and New Mexico to Santa Fe

Friday August 17
We stayed at a campsite which was on the edge of an old lava flow, supposedly the last lava flow in the US. This seems incorrect to me because of the Mount St. Helen's eruption in the early eighties in Washington State. At any rate we were amongst the solidified lava.

The closest town was Carrizozo, NM. We drove on towards Albuquerque, NM. for lunch. I picked out the lunch spot from the travel guide. Our entire meal including the salad dressing came in Styrofoam. The lunch was lousy and I regretted my choice. A park, which was along the way from our air conditioned van to the restaurant, had vendors set up selling the most wonderful jewellery. The vendors where local Native artists but it was too hot to make any choices on such costly items. We came across a rest area that had its building raised up on stilts.














A sign as you were about to enter warned of rattlesnakes, a sign not often seen. At the next rest area before Santa Fe, NM we discovered from the attendants that we had hit the big Indian Market weekend which would start tomorrow. The panic was on to find suitable accommodation because the Market supposedly attracts eighty thousand visitors a year and has about twelve hundred artists in eight hundred booths. People book their hotels a year in advance. Two spots were not suitable or were booked so we phoned the next spot as it was south, east of town. We found our place at Rancheros in Santa Fe, NM. We found out that museums were free on Fridays after five o'clock so off we went to the museum honouring the artist Georgia O'Keeffe, to the Museum of Natural History and to The Museum of Fine Arts, plus a few little independent art galleries. Wow...Ken said he was arted out, just a little too much art in a few hours, especially what he felt was art without a message. Looking for a restaurant was our next activity. One particular building had many people lingering outside with plates of food and glasses of wine. In we went to see what was going on. It was a gallery opening, one of many that evening, so we got in the food line-up. Very good meal, just what we needed. We toured the stores and galleries that remained opened and drove back to our campsite.


Thursday August 16
We woke up to a weird diesel smell and popping sounds in the distance. When we stopped by the ranger station they told us it was pump jacks starting up to pump the oil out of the ground in the nearby fields.

That morning we drove to the Carlsbad Caverns through hilly, rocky, cactus laden, windy road. There in the middle of what seemed like no wheresville was a National Park housing the largest caves in North America. We took the spelunking for dummies path which used the elevator to descend the seven hundred and fifty feet into the cave. The cool, temperate, cavernous rooms were awe inspiring with stalactites and stalagmites, etc.


These caves are supposedly the most beautiful in the world. Once out of the caves we returned to the oven, which is the temperature of New Mexico in the summer.

We ate at the second best Chinese Restaurant in Carlsbad, soon to regret our luck at missing the best Chinese Restaurant. We continued on, through to Roswell, NM. Did not see any UFOs, unless you count all the plastic or painted models of them that the town promoted. The town was like a small town in Saskatchewan, Kindersley, for example.




We drove through Capitan, NM. In case you have never heard of it, the town was very near the mountain gap where Smoky the Bear was found as a cub in 1950. He was found clinging to the trunk of a burnt tree trying to escape the forest fire which had taken his family. Smokey the Bear was, of course, the National Forestry Services spokes bear during the fifties and sixties for forest fire prevention awareness. Capitan houses his final remains and capitalizes on his identity.








Wednesday August 15
We drove through the north west section of Texas. Mostly we didn't see any cattle grazing, nor oil drilling rigs. We could have been driving north of Saskatoon, SK or parts of Alberta as it looked so similar. The towns and people looked similar, too. The guys, however, really do wear those big cowboy hats and everyone speaks with a Texas drawl. Oh, I forgot, there is cactus and small yucca trees growing in the fields which is different from Canada. We found suitable sleeping accommodations at Brantley Lake State Park, just north of Carlsbad, New Mexico.






This Park had the largest collection of big bugs I had ever seen, especially outside the woman's restroom. One tough looking red bug of note was dragging around a tarantula carcass, a meal I was told by the rangers. Nice to be back in the states. The positive points of this campsite were the desert cotton tails and the black-eared jack rabbits. After it got really dark, we laid back and looked up at the stars through Pepe's skylight. The sky was bright with stars. The crickets were chirping, camping seemed wonderful.

Mexico - Queretaro, San Luis Potosi, Saltillo, Nuevo Laredo

Tuesday August 14
We both woke up on the wrong side of the bed and were very grumpy. Grumpy from cognitive overload or cognitive burden - unfamiliarity with language, food difficulties, everywhere we go something different, poor driving conditions, etc. We were exhausted but too into our holiday to take time to rest. We continued driving north towards the USA and I slept as we by-passed Monterrey. Approaching Monterrey we saw condos or row houses, Mexican style. They looked much smaller and more stark than our condos in Canada.





Trying to leave Mexico we had noticed we were running out of gas. We went to our final Pemex, the government operated gas stations. There were several Mexican guys there all gathered around commenting on Ken's request for premium gas. They thought that was very funny, we think. Anyway, we got gas of some description but Pepe started hesitating fairly soon afterwards. Ken thinks we might have been given some type of bad gas. We arrived at the Mexico/USA border, quite happy to enter the US, but sad to leave Mexico. From what I have read it is usually fairly easy to cross over the Mexican border, it is at the US border where there might be difficulties. You have to be sure to declare everything you bought in Mexico. The US border guard we had was very friendly and appeared to appreciate our honesty.


We crossed over at Laredo, TX and Nuevo Laredo, MX, over the Rio Grande River, obviously over a bridge. Ken forgot to turn in our Mexican vehicle permit at the border. The little building that was to house the officials taking the vehicle permits had a cleaning crew in it when we passed by. Guess we will have to snail mail the permit back to Mexico. We drove passed San Antonio, TX as dusk was approaching. I would have liked to have taken sometime in San Antonio but another large city was just too much to ask at this time. We continued on and drove until we again needed gas. It was dark and was still very hot outside. I found a friendly, young cat to pick up and hold. Ken went and talked to an older gentleman in the service station. Ken started discussing the weather with him and discussed whether or not it was going to rain or not. He said, "Yeah, on Thursday it'll rain when the hurricane hits." That was a good indicator to get the heck out of Texas fast as we could (Later we heard it was a category 5 hurricane. That would blow the chrome off your bumper).


Monday August 13
Continuing our drive through a yucca tree forest Ken spotted a donkey tied up outside a bar. We stopped to take pictures. The donkey's owner came out of the cantina and appeared to be pleased that we were amused by "El Burro". We took his picture and that of El Burro. This Mexican farmer was very friendly and we both shook his hard working, rough, farmer hands. We arrived in the city of Saltillo, Coahuila. I bought some dried, red poblano peppers and Ken actually found la funda for his leatherman that his brother-in-law, Mike, gave him for Christmas. I found out about the peppers from the Franz book.





We shopped for a while and felt we should have some refreshment. After going into a cafe we realized it was close to supper time and went to walk out. A Mexican man came up to us speaking in English. He wondered why we were leaving. He sponsored tours of the city and gave us a handmade tour book. He had taught himself English. He recommended an area of fine artisans. We purchased our hand blown glasses there and some sunglass cases. We were in a shop that had a young man weaving sarapes on a loom. Our lengthy shopping day ended here and we stayed at a camping spot that we shared with no one. This particular place had a hotel in the front which had WiFi and a Talavera garden in the back. By this time in our trip we were pretty exhausted and just wanted to get going out of Mexico and up to Saskatchewan.


Sunday August 12
Woke up in the northern outskirts of Juriquilla, Queretaro, MX. We drove through the desert with lots of yucca trees, the hills were peppered with them. Some of these trees when growing close together and looked like they were dancing with each other. Along the highway were houses made out of cindercrete blocks and/or adobe homes. Our aim was San Luis Potosi. When we arrived we walked around the centro historico. We got lost several times this day and never did find the artist market we were looking for. I was exhausted. Another interesting fact is that Mexican farmers tie up their livestock by the side of the highway. We think they do this because that is where there actually is grass growing for them to eat. This is where I got to take pictures of donkeys or burros.














Saturday August ll
We left Pepe's again and aimed towards Queretaro, QTO, Mexico. We went from highway MX 57 to MX 120 to the resort town of San Juan del Rio for lunch. We ate in the car as we are real sick of restaurant food. On the way we saw literally miles of people biking, obviously together as they had team T-shirts. Some members had glass boxes with shrines or crosses enclosed in them on their backs. We could not read the city they came from. We looked for jewellery in San Juan del Rio as it is a precious and semi-precious stones hot bed. I did buy some jewellery from a street vendor. We drove to the Juarez Market and bought a few veggies for supper. Ken bought sangria glasses to drink with tequila. We continued on to Tequisquiapam to walk their bougainvillea lined streets It was sort of a nice, tourist trap type town - but mostly for rich people from Mexico City. The camping facilities we were aiming towards at Queretaro had changed hands and was now only a hotel remainded. That is where we stayed.

Mexico City - Distrito Federal, Teotihuacan

Friday August 10
We had enough of the big city and wanted to go to the ruins at Teotihuacan, or as the Mexican's call it - Piramides. The Churchs' book described a route actually from Pepe's to the ruins. We were planning on a short trip with little hassle. Unfortunately for us the Mexican highway department does not provide signage when they close major highways nor inform you of alternate routes. We were able to make it to the pyramides, but to this day we are not sure how.







The pyramids were worth the trouble. The big one, the Pyramid of the Sun, is the third largest in pyramid in the world.


















I made it to the top of likely the smallest pyramid in the world (temple of Quetzalcoatl) and was more than terrified to get down. After about what seemed like an hour in the hot midday sun and after weighing all possible options such as a helicopter rescue, I walked down on my butt. I must mention that Ken was up and down this pyramid several times trying to cajole me into going down the stairs.












Once I gained my composure, we decided to take a slightly western route paralleling the Avenue of the Dead, which is the main thoroughfare, to the Pyramid of the Sun. Feeling somewhat brave I went up a third of the way on this pyramid, Ken went to the top and took pictures. Ken says that after the other sights we have seen so far the view was not that spectacular.


Then I insisted we traverse more of the Avenue of the Dead dog tired and go to the end - the Temple of the Moon. By the time we reached that pyramid I was as not as afraid of the height but was extremely tired and so was Ken. We saw some other sights such as a jaguar painted in red. Then we toured the palace of Quetzalpapalotl of which some parts were restored. All along the Avenue of the Dead dog tired were vendors selling their wares for cheap prices. Personally I found it annoying and distracting from the venue at hand. We had taken over five hours to do the pyramid's tour.















We thought we might as well return to Pepe's rather than looking for another campsite further north. Our highway back had been changed as well. Driving through the northern half of Mexico City by compass was a challenge. Without proper maps we stuck to wider roads where the traffic was moving. Hence the saying, "in the right direction at the right speed", a saying Ken would use when ... digestion... was working properly.









































Thursday August 9
This will hopefully be the big day when we get to go into the Frieda exhibit. This exhibit gathers together many of Frieda Kahlo's paintings for the 100th anniversary of her birth, 1907 to 2007. The taxi drive downtown was fairly uneventful as I awoke from my mid-morning nap I saw rubber trees lining the streets. Not the size of the potted rubber tree in your living room but shade tree size. Once we arrived at our true to art deco styled destination, Palacio de Bellas Artes, we noticed a different type of line-up. I stood there for a while as Ken went to check if tickets bought yesterday were still valid. Ken returned to take us up to the "already have tickets" line up. We waited inside for only about half an hour before getting into the actual Frieda exhibit. Once into the exhibit it was a perimeter line-up for viewing the work. Very moving exhibit!!! Well worth the hassle of getting into this show. Very world class, superb work with exquisite technical mastery. I feel very lucky that I was able to view such work and so much of it all at one time. We were both exhausted after our three plus hour line-up and art viewing session.






We thought we would again return to the Zocalo. It seemed to hold a weird attraction for us. This time we took a different route through a long street of vendors selling all sorts of weird, usual things.











Once, for example, we saw a man using a treadle sewing machine doing machine thread painting. We took this route go to a vegetable market which was a bust. The candy displayed was made out of sugar from the cactus plants. The candy was alive with bees, ugh! This was a hot and sunny walk we had chosen for our afternoon.



















We took a taxi to another artisan market and than the subway to Coyoacan where Frieda had lived out most of her life. Being too late to go to the museum of her home we went and ate at a mall.













This mall had an armed guard at the entry way. No shoplifting here. We took the subway back to Palacio de Bellas Artes and our faithful taxi driver from Tepotzotlan. We had to say so long to Mexico City. There was so much more to experience and see in the biggest city in the world, but honestly it was noisy and crowded with people and vehicles. We wanted to smell fresh air, go to less crowded areas.









Wednesday August 8
We could not drive our car into Mexico City (not that we wanted to) because of "hoy no circula" based on the last number of our license plate. Mexico City has very polluted air. They are trying to do something about it by not allowing certain vehicles into the city on specific days. On the weekend any vehicles can go into the city. We took a taxi into the city that our hotel host called for us in Tepotzotlan. This was a recommendation we were given that you should always take taxis that are called by the hotel not just any old taxi waiting around. It was to cost us 250 pesos, but considering that it would take us about an hour and fifteen minutes to get there and we wanted to go right down town, it was a bargain.

We were dropped off at Palacio de Bellas Artes and noticed there was a huge, approximately three block long line up outside the building. Ken bought us tickets to go into the Frieda Kahlo show. Not liking line-ups, we decided to go across the street to Alameda Park and eat our snack hoping the line-up would dissipate. It did not!


















We continued on to the Diego Rivera mural museum which really only contained one great mural and some pictures from his life. Line-up check again - line-up worse! Not only did the line-up have people waiting in the hot sun, but also inside, wrapped around the entrance hallway and the stairs - a mass of people.

















We decided to walk on to the Zocalo which is the centre of town. I was in complete awe of the size and structure of the buildings that wrapped around this central square. There was a stage set up with music playing in the background. There were many tents set up with vendors. It got really windy and looked like rain so we again headed back to the Palacio de Bellas Artes. It did start raining and even hailed. We just hung out in stores looking like we could buy something. The rain thinned out the crowded streets just slightly. Ken wanted to check out different kinds of tequila so we went into a liquor store and discussed tequila. We stumbled upon their version of China town, much smaller than Vancouver's then onto the San Juan Mercado which was a bust, prices were high --- quality low. Food was on our minds and you can't just eat anywhere in Mexico City - back to the Zocala and food vendors. No edible food was discovered so back again to the Palacio de Bellas Artes and our taxi driver, Lazaro, was there waiting for us.


Now you would think this was the end to a busy day - it was not. Our hour and fifteen minutes into the city turned into three hours back to Pepe's. The traffic was the worst I had ever seen. Buses, Semi Trucks and cars all bunched together to form a four to six lane highway of grid lock going north. Oh, and did I mention it was raining, too. With all that traffic and exhaust fumes the driver kept the windows closed and used recirculated air as defrost so the windows kept fogging up.