We’ve had a great couple of days. After an uninspiring drive across new Mexico we went to Santa Fe to kill some time, couple of days, and stopped in a nice hotel, used the gym and went for Chinese. They even make the Chinese food with chillies, well this is the state of chillies.
We then took out bloated selves into town to find a bar, and found a good long bar, good music called el paseo. Beers later and we got chatting to cha, jack and katy, with 2 hours until cha’s birthday we drank until it came time to start doing shots, and when that bar closed at two onwards to the next bar for some smokey magic, and fuzzyness before getting a lift to the hotel.
Yesterday morning alan and I went for a wander around town. It’s pretty, all classic architecture, brown, earthy and full of art. The city is known to be a centre of creative people, and is america’s oldest capital, celebrating it’s 400th anniversary this month! America is barely over half that age.
So we had some brunch, a priceyish rooftop cafe, and I had a salad. My salad involved a lettuce cut into clean quarters and placed on my plate just like that with some decoration. Nice!
So after that we hooked up with the guys from the last night and Thomas and off we went into the wilderness to shoot off a rifle. We can’t shoot for damn, missing bottles, but it was about the experience. Not an experience I care to do any time soon, it was strange to say the least, but all part of our American adventure.
After that we drove down to diablo canyon near the rio grand and wandered up to a cliff. This is the first time for me to climb since indoors at Zurich last autumn, first time ever on a real mountain, and same for alan but maybe he hadn’t climbed in many a year. Fun for sure, scary too, tiring definately, but one hell of a view and great to hang out with some awesome guys.
After, we headed back to jack and katie’s where we all mucked in to cook dinner, other people coming and going, yum and fun.
On to poker, I like to take risks, make it exciting, and got kicked out thrice, great, so shots an later alan won.
Today we gathered our heads together, said our farewells and drive off into the country.
We randomly found Madrid, otherwise known as Mad rid. Once a mining town, then and now a hippy town, but made famous by a john travolta film ‘wild hogs’ it’s super bizarro, eclectic, new age, pretty cool. I tried me some fried green tomatoes on a salad, not bad. Well that was it for Madrid bar a few photos and we drove on, wishing grandpa happy birthday by phone and off yo get lost.
Lunch hadn’t been filling enough so we took a right turn, signed to a diner, toward a ski area. We ended up a mile higher, overlooking Albuquerque, so cool view, bloody cold and had lunch número dos.
Fun fun, now we are outside jessica, not rachael’s place in Albuquerque, our couchsurfing hosts for the next two nights waiting for their return home.