Around Santa Fe

Although we had enjoyed yesterday’s breakfast at Café Pasqual’s, it was quite pricey, so we looked elsewhere today and found the Burro Alley Café, conveniently located a couple of blocks from our casita. Today it appears to have been turned into a burger restaurant, but back in 2011 it was a bakery and café, perfect for breakfast time. It had a really pretty courtyard opening onto the lane that gives it its name, with some small trees which would have given welcome shade in the heat of the day. This morning though we were happy to sit in the sun. The courtyard walls were adorned with brightly painted wooden shutters which were very photogenic and kept our cameras busy while we waited for our order.

The bakery produces excellent pastries served fresh for breakfast. Chris had a chocolate one while mine was a huge almond one, both served still slightly warm from the oven. With two glasses of orange juice, a cappuccino for Chris and a double espresso for me (hooray, real caffeine!) we paid roughly half the cost of previous day’s breakfast.

Bandelier National Monument

One reason for our planning to spend several days in Santa Fe was to do a day trip to Bandelier National Monument. I had read a lot about it on Virtual Tourist and elsewhere, and knew it was just the sort of place we would enjoy visiting. Then a few months before our visit a wildfire swept through the area, devastating over 146,000 acres, including about 60% of Bandelier’s area. Almost all of the monument was closed to visitors. But fortunately for us one small part remained open, and it sounded like one of the most interesting – Tsankawi. So that was our planned destination for today.

Getting to Tsankawi is impossible without a private vehicle. It lies twelve miles from the main section of Bandelier National Monument and isn’t the easiest place to find. The park’s website gives the following directions:
‘Coming from Santa Fe you'll turn from State Highway 502 to State Highway 4. Less than 1/4 of a mile past this turn Tsankawi will be located on the left hand side of the road. There are no signs for Tsankawi on Highway 4. If you get to the stoplight, you've gone too far. A large gravel parking area adjacent to the highway and a sign on the fence will indicate you've found the place.’

We followed these directions and had no problem finding the place, although even so we overshot the parking area and had to turn around.

There was an honour pay post in the little hut at the start of the trail, with a permit to be displayed in your car. The only two other cars parked there when we arrived didn’t appear to have bothered, perhaps feeling it was unnecessary with most of the monument closed, but we paid – they were going to need the funds to repair the fire’s damage, after all. We should also have been able to buy a 50c leaflet describing the trail at the honour pay post, with about 20 numbered points along it, but they had all gone, apart from a slightly tatty one which could be borrowed for free and returned to the leaflet holder after the walk. We took this, and were very pleased to have done so, as it was very informative and also helped to keep us on the right path at one point where it seemed to fork.

Armed with this leaflet we set out. The trail is advertised as being 1.5 miles in length, although it seemed a little longer than this to us. It is also advertised as easy, but that is a relative term, as while it isn’t strenuous I did find a few parts tricky going, mainly because you are, quite literally, walking in the footsteps of the ancient inhabitants of this land, in the deep grooves worn in the rocks over the centuries. In places that path is worn very deep (as much as 30 or more centimetres) and is only one foot wide, by which I mean the width of your foot, not the measurement! You have to put one foot directly in front of the other, and lift each one high so as to clear the side ‘wall’ of the path.

But if this trail demands any sort of effort, it is a worthwhile one, as the views and the sense of history amply repay you for taking the trouble to walk where the ancients once walked. And remember that they would have done so in sandals, or even with bare feet, and I am certain would have been far more sure-footed than any of us, even the best of walkers, on this rocky trail.

The first part of the trail led up the side of the mesa, with a ladder at one point. The leaflet pointed out the location of the first of several petroglyphs (rock carvings, as opposed to rock paintings which are known as pictographs).

We then followed the well-worn path of the ancient inhabitants of this land up to the mesa top. From here we had an almost 360 degree view of the surrounding landscape, including several mountain ranges. To the west lie the Jemez Mountains, with Los Alamos at their foot. To the east are the Sangre de Cristo Mountains (named for the Blood of Christ) and the Rio Grande Valley. About 70 miles south are the Sandia Mountains, which dominate the skyline above Albuquerque.

Here the ancient Pueblo Indians (sometimes known as the Anasazi) built their village or pueblo: Tsankawi. They lived on the mesa top from some time in the 15th century until towards the end of the 16th. It is thought that the village may have been abandoned due to a severe drought in the region. The pueblo at San Ildefonso, eight miles away, have the tradition that their ancestors lived at Tsankawi, while other pueblos also claim ancestral links.

The village was built out of tuff stone plastered inside and out with mud. It was roughly rectangular in shape with about 350 rooms and an enclosed central courtyard or plaza. Today almost nothing visible remains, and there has been no archaeological excavation. Consultation with San Ildefonso Pueblo has revealed that the people prefer that the homes and belongings of their ancestors remain untouched. Using new technology, a variety of information can be gathered from an archaeological site without ever uncovering it. That means however that to the uninitiated there seems to be little here, although the imaginative can discern the shape of the plaza as a clearing in the scrubby bushes that grow here. To imagine it properly though, it helps to have visited one of the still-inhabited pueblos in the area, so we were glad we had been to Acoma a couple of days previously. The village would have been a hive of activity: women cooking or grinding corn, or maybe making pottery, men carving tools from flint or skinning animals, children playing, dogs darting underfoot and so on.

The people who lived in these houses would have descended each day to the valley floor below to farm their crops, following the same well-worn trails that brought us up here. On the way they would have passed the cavates where some of their fellow villagers lived, and that is where the trail now took us.

We had seen the cavates dotted along the face of the mesa quite early in our walk, but the trail at first had led us away from these to climb up to the village above. It is only when we descended from there that we got a close look at the other places the ancients called home.

The inhabitants dug these caves out of the soft rock, extending the walls where needed with stones and mortar, and adding timber roofs. These have of course long since disappeared, and the caves that remain look almost natural rather than man-made. But if you peer inside (there are no restrictions on access other than your own capacity to reach them, and as several are right by the trail it is easy to enter them) you will see the ceilings and walls of some blackened by the smoke of long-extinguished fires, evidence of the human impact on this apparently natural environment.

It’s important to take care when exploring the caves not to touch any walls, as even light contact can cause damage. And of course you must never remove anything from a site as historic as this, nor from any national park or monument.

A few of the caves apparently have traces of paintings or petroglyphs inside, but we didn’t find any here, although we did spot some at several points along the trail.

Many have been damaged by exposure to the elements over the centuries – and no doubt by exposure to people too.

The trail leaflet explained more about them:
‘Today through consultation with San Ildefonso Pueblo descendants, we know that these marks upon the rocks have deeper meanings than mere art. They may someday even be classified as a written language. The meanings of some petroglyphs are known to many present-day Pueblo people. The exact significance of others may have been lost through time.’

But not every petroglyph here was carved by the ancestral Pueblo people who once inhabited Tsankawi – some are later additions created by Spanish settlers. Their shepherds kept their herds in small pens built under the rock outcroppings here and are thought to have carved some of the shapes and symbols, such as arrows, during Colonial times (between the late 1800s to early 1900s). But just because the Spanish shepherds did so, there is absolutely no excuse for any of us to try to add to these carvings. As always on National Park land (or indeed anywhere else of historic or natural significance) the rule must be, ‘look but don’t touch’!

Towards the end of our walk, as we were on the final stretch back towards the parking lot (but with still maybe half a mile or so to go), clouds started to gather to the east of us, behind our backs, and they were clearly moving faster than we were – especially as we kept stopping to take photos. We remembered then the warnings we’d read about the dangers of being caught out in this exposed rocky landscape during a storm, so we quickened our pace to make sure we were safely back at the car before the clouds came directly overhead. In the event, no storm ensued, but we thought it better to be safe than sorry in this unforgiving environment.

We ate a picnic lunch while planning where to go next. I realised that we were quite near Española and as I’d read about an interesting sight there, we drove over to check it out.

Chimayó Trading Post, Española

Española is an unprepossessing town a few miles north of Santa Fe, but is home to a little gem. To step inside the Chimayó Trading Post is to feel yourself transported back around a hundred years, when the pace of life was slower and nothing was ever thrown away, because it might just come in handy one day. And it seemed to me that many of those un-thrown away items have found their way here, to Española. The location of the Trading Post, marooned on a small triangle of land surrounded by busy roads, is somehow apt, because the place itself feels like a perfect slice of history marooned in the 21st century.

And if you’re wondering why a trading post in Española should be named for a neighbouring town, well apparently the building was originally built in nearby Chimayó in 1926, but was moved to this location in the 1930s. Behind the store is the Trujillo House, dating from around the same time. Both it and the store have been in the Trujillo family ever since, as we were to find out when we met Leo Trujillo inside.

We parked our car next to the trading post – the only car in what was quite a large lot. After taking a few photos of the appealing exterior, we pushed open the door and entered. Immediately a wavering voice to our right announced, ‘This place is going to be in a book you know. But you’ve come too early; it won’t be out for a month.’

This was our introduction to Leo, the owner of the trading post. The trading post has, as I said, been in this location since the 1930s, and it seemed to us that Leo must have moved here then too, and possibly been sitting inside behind the counter where we met him ever since, as his age and that of many of the objects for sale here seemed about the same, and he seemed as much of a fixture as they did too. From old brass beds to china dogs, kachina dolls to copper kettles, wooden santos to porcelain tea-cups, National Geographic magazines from decades past to antique furniture – even a fairground horse! This place is a treasure trove / junk shop / total dump, depending on your perspective, and all three perspectives are valid in fact – it just depends what your eyes light on next. You could browse here for hours, if so inclined, or give it all a cursory glance and dismiss it as being too chaotic to face the search.

As we rootled around, and took our photos (having asked and been given permission), Leo continued to chat, even when we were more or less out of earshot. Mainly he talked about the objects, telling us to be sure to look in this corner or that. But he also mentioned that someone he referred to as ‘the girl’ had gone to buy his lunch, and that when she returned she would show us the house if we would like. We had no idea what that might involve but it sounded interesting, so we agreed.

Meanwhile we picked out a few (old) postcards, and as a memento of our visit I also chose one of the samplers of Native American weavings (they can be seen on the bed in my photo above, and ours now hangs in our kitchen). Leo carefully hand-wrote our receipt in lovely old copperplate, and threw in an extra postcard as a gift.

Just then ‘the girl’ returned with his lunch and agreed that she could indeed show us the house. So she led us to the back of the shop and through a half-open door into the house behind. This was Leo’s home, and had been so for many years. Our ‘tour guide’ explained as we went from room to room that Leo had worked as cabin crew for Pan Am, meeting his wife there, and settling down here in retirement. But before retiring their jobs had taken them all over the world, and wherever they went, they collected the things that most appealed to them, with the result that the house is as much a treasure trove of antiques as the trading post itself.

So it was perhaps not surprising to see some things that would look more at home in an English country house or Chinese pagoda than in the western US. The kitchen too was fascinating, and more or less unchanged since the 1930s I suspect. We also enjoyed meeting Leo’s cat, named by his owner as Obama (because he’s ‘black and white, like the President’).

Sadly I have learned from an interesting article I found online while updating my Virtual Tourist notes for this blog that Leo died in 2017 – his nephew Patrick now runs the store (see Chimayó Trading Post is Española landmark). So it seems that the house may well be very different these days (Patrick is planning to open it as an art centre where visitors can meet and buy directly from the artists) even though, thankfully, the store seems little changed.

Eventually we said our goodbyes to both ‘girl’ and Leo and left. Back outside we walked round to the side of the building to see the house’s exterior, and found that to be almost as fascinating a hotch-potch of items as the rooms inside – our eyes being particularly caught by an old street sign from Shoulder of Mutton Alley, a tiny side street in London’s docklands! We also learnt, from a sign on an outside wall, that this house, known as the Trujillo House, was placed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1999.

If you are interested there are lots more pictures of the house (including some interiors) and store on the Historical Marker Database website http://www.hmdb.org/marker.asp?marker=34205], as well as one of Leo taken in 2010, not long before we met him.

Abiquiu

From Española we then drove further north up Highway 84, keen to see something of the landscape that had inspired Georgia O’Keefe after our visit to the museum yesterday. Unfortunately the weather chose that moment to turn rather overcast (maybe the clouds we had spotted from Tsankawi had finally driven away the blue sky), but nevertheless the landscape was very impressive and well worth the drive.

Once beyond Española the drive was pleasant enough, but it was after we passed the small town of Chili that it started to get more dramatic. At first the drama came from the contrast between the lush green valley of the Rio Chama and the more barren hills on either side. Then as we neared Abiquiu the rocky outcrops got more eye-catching and the colours richer, with reds and whites predominating.

The village of Abiquiu, home to O’Keeffe for more than 40 years, tends to keep itself to itself, and visitors are not really encouraged, much as is the case with many of the pueblos. You can tour the O’Keeffe house, but only with a prior reservation. We hadn’t planned that far ahead, so decided to give the village a miss and instead headed for Abiquiu Lake a few miles further up the road. This is managed by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, and the approach road is a little less scenic than you might hope, as you pass a small power station beside the road, but once beyond this you can park up by the Visitor Centre and stroll up the slope behind it to the point known as the Overlook.

Here we had a magnificent view of the lake, and beyond it the distinctive flat-topped of Cerro Pedernal, the mountain that found its way into so many of O’Keeffe’s works. It was rather windy on this somewhat exposed ridge overlooking the water, but in better weather it would be a marvellous place for a picnic. The path leads past labelled examples of local shrubs and flowers, and I was able to identify a couple that I had been admiring during our travels round the state.

Because of the wind and rather dull skies we didn't linger long here, and instead headed back to Santa Fe to relax in our casita for a short while before dinner.

Back to the Shed

We had reserved a table for dinner at the Shed, having been impressed when we ate lunch there on our first day in the city. Beforehand though we went to a bar we had spotted on the previous day, the Marble Brewery, which had a terrace overlooking the Plaza (I say ‘had’, because like several of the bars and restaurants we enjoyed on this trip it has sadly since closed down). There were a number of ‘house beers’ to choose from, all available in three sizes (pint, 10 oz or 5 oz), making it easy to try several different beers in one visit, and the waiting staff were also happy to bring a small taster if you wanted to try one before committing. Chris favoured the India Pale Ale while I rather liked the Marble Red which had loads of flavour.

Then it was on to the Shed for our 8.30 reservation. We actually arrived a little early, but got seated by 8.20 or so. Our table was inside, in one of the smaller rooms off the main one, which was very cosy with only a few tables and less noisy than the larger space where we’d had lunch the previous day.

Having rather bigger appetites than we had come with yesterday lunch-time, we were keen to try the New Mexican dishes for which they have such a good name. So we shared some chips and salsa to start with, which Chris followed with the ‘layered enchiladas’ – two blue corn tortillas layered with cheddar cheese, onion, covered with red chilli and baked – a sort of New Mexican lasagne! I had the taco plate, made with two soft blue corn tortillas filled with cheddar cheese, onion, tomato, lettuce and a choice of meats – I opted for chicken (I could also have had ground beef) and green chilli (I could naturally also have had red). These were served with pinto beans and rice.

Salsa, chips and a 'Shed Red'

Both meals were excellent, but mine especially so – one of the best I had on the whole trip! To drink I had a ‘Shed Red’, a margarita with pomegranate juice, which was very good, without reaching the dizzy heights of my green chilli version of the previous evening. Chris had a beer, we shared a cheesecake for dessert, and found the bill to be really reasonable. I can see why this restaurant is a favourite with Santa Fe locals – it would be a regular haunt for us too if we lived here!