Taos PuebloI'm not going to bang on about my hols for ever and ever, don't worry. Most of you have probably seen San Francisco, Los Angeles, and Las Vegas although I bet not many have flown over the Grand Canyon in a helicopter! But one place which was mercifully free of tourists was New Mexico.
The architecture in New Mexico is like nowhere else in the USA. The ancient and native American technique of building houses with adobe - mud to you and me - is still used. It is solid, keeps the heat in in winter, out in summer, and easy to maintain. And it lasts forever.
We stayed a couple of nights in Santa Fe with Smokin' Squaw's friend Sky Raincloud, who lives in just such an adobe house, which is most tastefully furnished and decorated, with lovely gardens front and back. Santa Fe is an old railroad town, and we visited the La Fonda Hotel, which was one of the original Harvey restaurants. I had of course seen the famous clip from the Judy Garland film "The Harvey Girls" but didn't know the back story. It is gorgeous, built in adobe with old Spanish style interiors, with lots of dark wood and Mexican and native American artwork. A jazz quartet was tootling in the corner as we sipped our margaritas and admired the ceiling. If you ever go to Santa Fe, this is where you should stay.
Another 2,000 ft higher up in the foothills of the Sangre de Cristo mountains, Smokin' Squaw took me to Taos Pueblo, on the "rez" or reservation, where she greeted her fellow native Americans with a cheery "Howdy!" which is, I believe, the modern version of the native American greeting "How". "Five dollars" they replied, impassively. The adobe buildings at Taos Pueblo are about 1,000 years old. They are the oldest continually-inhabited buildings in America. They look like a very basic condominium building, with no stairs. A bit like a student hall of residence. There were ladders leading to the upper apartments, and the entrances were through the roof. This was for security, if enemies were seen approaching, the ladders would be pulled up and the women and children would retreat into their homes.
The pueblo still has no electricity, gas or running water, the Indians want it that way, although I noticed a large number of pickups parked here and there. There were no dances the day we visited, so we wandered around the craft shops. One shopowner had a photograph of his grandfather greeting a very young King Juan Carlos of Spain! Turquoise is the favourite gemstone in New Mexico and is used a great deal in Indian jewellery. They say if you buy turquoise, you'll come back to New Mexico. So I had to treat myself to a pair of silver feather earrings with a spot of turquoise in them.
The Indian reservations are sovereign territory, and have their own government and police force. Only federal police are allowed to enter. The late author Tony Hillerman created a Navajo detective in a series of books set on a reservation. Some reservations have casinos, but these are generally alcohol-free. Fire water is still taboo in indian territory, although they don't object to relieving you of your wampum. Despite the vast tracts of land they now own, they are still the poorest people in America.
We visited the famous old church of San Francisco de Asis in Ranchos de Taos, which has been painted and photographed by all and sundry from Georgia O'Keeffe to Ansel Adams. We were lucky enough to be able to chat to the pastor, who gave us the history of some of the Mexican artwork inside the church. His accent sounded familiar. He was from Glasgow! Father Francis Malley, for it was he, asked me where I was going next. The words Las Vegas slipped out. He fixed me with a stern eye. "The one in New Mexico, I hope?" he asked. "Erm, no, the other one,". With a twinkle, he told me he had been to Las Vegas, Nevada three times. I had to push visions of Father Ted out of my mind.
Had I stuck around a few weeks more I could have gone to Dennis Hopper's funeral in that very church.
I had to pay a visit to the world headquarters of the Earthship Biotecture movement just outside Taos, having seen a documentary on TV last year about their inventor, Mike Reynolds, the "Garbage Warrior". I vaguely wondered if my little eco-warrior friend Scrumpy (my previous lodger) might have found his way there (although I suspect his search for fulfillment in oriental wisdom didn't get further east than Amsterdam). The Earthships are not far from the vertigo-inducing bridge over the Rio Grande gorge, upon which Smokin' Squaw and I had taken a few tentative steps but retreated to terra firma after only venturing out to about one-tenth of the span. The Comanches are obviously not one of those tribes who have no fear of heights.
The Earthship village is a work still under construction, and I suspect might be so for some time to come. Adobe and old tyres are the building material of choice, with bottles and aluminium cans for decoration and wall filler. The overall effect can be somewhat Gaudi-esque when it is done well, as with the visitor centre.
The rest of the building materials are mostly local and natural (wood, compacted earth). The water they use comes from the melting snow in the mountains and is used 4 times, first for drinking, then for washing, thirdly for the toilet, and lastly for fertilising crops and plants. Their electricity comes from solar panels and wind turbines, and their air conditioning (it gets mighty hot in summer there) is "passive thermal", otherwise known as opening windows.
They haven't solved the problem of eco-friendly transport yet, and a number of cars and pickups were parked nearby. But they are stuck out in the middle of nowhere, give the guys a break. It's not for hippie layabouts either - a 2-bedroom 1-bathroom Earthship "cottage" costs $440,000 to buy plus utilility bills and local taxes. If you want to know more, check out their website.
Smokin' Squaw remarked that "there's a lot of woo-woo in Taos", and one night, returning to the house, I happened to look up and saw why. The most starry sky I have ever seen in my life spread out above me. Millions upon millions upon millions of stars against a perfect black velvet sky. I gazed and gazed until I gave myself a crick in the neck. I stared so long I could almost see the little lines connecting the constellations as in the maps of the heavens. Too much of that and I could go a little woo-woo myself.
The Defarges were in Bruges last weekend, I went up to meet them for lunch and we re-enacted the scene from "They flew to Bruges" where our heroes escape on a motor launch through the canals of Bruges with only European Commission umbrellas for protection. Our pilot was a dead ringer for Binky Beaumont, as played by E.L.Whisty. It was definitely a Group Day in Bruges, with groups of Russian sailors in big hats wandering around mournfully searching for the non-existent red light district, a group of leather-clad superannuated biker gals who we nicknamed the Hell's Grannies, a group from the Red Hat society in glorious technicolour, and a group of lazy people on Segways. As we sat down for lunch in the Square Stevin, the unmistakeable sound of a marching band struck up, and into the square marched the Boys' Brigade in blue shirts, glengarries, woggles, and SHORTS. tootling on their instruments. Some of them hadn't been boys for, oh, at least 50 years, their varicose veins smartly matching their shirts. Ooooh Old Men!
