Santa Fe, New Mexico
I arrived in Santa Fe on Saturday after a 13hr overnight bus trip on which the air conditioning made it super cold and hard to sleep. Santa Fe is a great little town. It’s law here that all the buildings must be built in the Spanish adobe style which makes all the houses look great and things like petrol stations and cinemas look mildly ridiculous.
On Saturday I went into town with a couple of guys from the hostel, Bruce and Davis, and we went to see a live band at a bar called cowgirls. It was a good night, really friendly and busy and the band were really good. They were kind enough to let me sing and play during one of their breaks which was great. I got chatting to Stephen, a New York born guy of Irish descent whom invited to play a round of golf on the Sunday, having never played golf I decided against it but we had some good banter nonetheless. I’ve found some guys here to be patriotic in a tunnel visioned kind of way and it can be hard to get beyond this. He was much more open though and we chatted a lot about the U.S. and UK.
Sunday was a pretty chilled out day. There was a Spanish market in town with lots of art, cuisine and music. It was pleasant to walk about in town and then I just hung out at the hostel that evening.
On Monday I went to catch a movie with Bruce and we grabbed a spot of lunch. Here in Santa Fe there are lots of galleries, the opera and every summer they have a Chamber music festival. Bruce and I went to see a performance of some Mozart, Brahms and a contemporary composer from Puerto Rico called Roberto Sierra. It was in a converted church building in town and I thought it was great, particularly Brahms Piano quartet No 2 in A. It really was a beautiful piece.
On Tuesday Davis and I went on a road trip round round the Jemez Mountain Scenic byway. We drove a 200 mile round trip consisting of some utterly beautiful scenery (I’ve got a few pictures you can check from the link below). We went to Tent Rocks which is this rock formation created by harder rocks protecting the softer rock they are stuck in from wind and water erosion. This leads to these tipi shaped points with harder rocks sitting precariously on top. Reading back I realise that my description is somewhat sketchy but you’ll get the jist from the photo’s.
We went on into the Jemez Pueblo reserve to see the imaginatively named red rocks. These were basically big cliff and rock formations that were filled with iron and were thus red.
Later that day we went swimming in a natural rock pool called Soda Dam. It was a great way to cool off during what was a very hot drive. We went on after that to catch a beautiful sunset over a former ranch called the Valles Caldera National Preserve. I’ve got photo’s of all this, I hope they do the scenery justice.
It really has been a quite relaxed time here, I’ve been playing my guitar quite a bit out the back of the hostel and trying to finish off a song or two. I’m enjoying reading Steinbeck’s the Grapes of Wrath as well.
I’m off to San Antonio Texas next where I expect it shall be hot hot hot again, I’m getting much more aclimatised to the heat so hopefully it shouldn’t be too bad.
Check out the Photos at
http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2198260&l=50df6&id=61006708