“Journey Through the Enchanting Southwest: Exploring New Mexico’s Deadly Beauty and Rich Heritage”
Members of the Taos Pueblo Native American tribe are selling ancient arrowheads along the banks of the Rio Grande Gorge, New Mexico‘s breathtaking beauty spot. The sheer drop is dizzying, with the hidden ravine plunging 800 feet deep and slit-narrow, as if the desert land has been sliced by a hunting knife. The mesmerizing desert landscape surrounding Taos quietly hints at how Taos, Santa Fe, and Albuquerque remain the beating heart of the once Wild West, or more precisely, the Southwest.
New Mexico
This enthralling natural scenery, with the Rocky Mountain snowy peaks glittering on the horizon in the spring sunshine, has always been alluring. It attracted DH Lawrence in the 1920s, Hollywood icon Denis Hopper in the 1990s, and fashion titan Tom Ford at the start of the 21st century—all choosing to move to this vast and ancient land with its signature pink adobe dwellings, including ruins carved into cliffs over 700 years ago.
The fifth-largest state, New Mexico, also boasts the least dense population, with just 2.1 million people spread over more than five million square miles—fewer than the whole of Manchester. It is one of the most popular destinations with 35 million visitors a year; a discerning place to find high and low culture, exotic food, and adventure—an opportunity to experience the unrivaled variety that is the USA.
Imagine lavender margaritas, the largest hot air balloon fiesta in Albuquerque, the international UFO museum in Roswell, or a drive along Route 66 in a Chevrolet as the cacti-strewn sandy-soiled landscape turns orange at dusk. New Mexico is also known for being super friendly, welcoming, and safe. It has become an increasingly popular destination, offering a perfect combination of traditional downtime relaxation with museums, local galleries, bars, and even a once-a-year chance to see the Trinity Atomic Bomb Site—the location of the first nuclear test, detonated by the US government in 1945. Quiet and quaint, enchanting and extraordinary, New Mexico is starkly modern but also steeped in prehistoric times.
Making a road trip between Taos, Santa Fe, and Albuquerque is embracing the American highways and is best done in a rental car. The roads are long and quiet, and the pace of life in the towns along the way is slow and easy. This is a quiet tempo where ordering a cup of coffee can mean a languishing, take-it-easy 10-minute wait in traditional artisan cafes. No one is in much of a hurry. Petrol for your car is, cheerfully for anyone from Europe, cheap. Hot chilis, cold beer, history, and fast-moving modern cultural changes collide. Gambling casinos sit alongside warm springs. New Mexico is also a new Hollywood, as Netflix and other film producers make movies here year-round. It is somewhat surreal as cannabis shops vie with vast road posters offering $52m truck collision insurance, as well as adverts for perfect bagels by the Einstein brothers.
Nowhere does history and natural drama combine as magnificently as at the Bandelier National Monument, with over 33,000 acres of rugged and beautiful canyons. This is desert country with a human presence going back over 11,000 years. There’s perfect hiking, and the brave can take the cliff ladders to the dizzying tip. See relics from the ancient Pueblo tribes that built dwellings here for thousands of years. Petroglyphs, Flintstone-like dwellings carved into the soft rock cliffs, are evidence of the early days of a culture that once defined America, especially its Native American past.
New Mexico is vibrant and enticing, and a three-day break gives time to experience great cuisine culture. This is the land of the green and red chili. They hang drying from rafters, window sills, and in the street, and are a signature of this southwestern state. Breakfast is defined by huevos rancheros: home-fried potatoes, black beans, homemade red chili, and tomatillo salsa fresco. This may not be for those on a garish diet, but it’s perfect for those who like it hot, hot, hot. It all signifies an experience entirely American.
Driving on New Mexico legendary Route 66, past signs for Comanche Road, the sense of the Wild West is never far with the Native American past and present. There is always a reminder of the indigenous Ancestral Pueblo people, who lived here from approximately AD 1150 to 1550.
New Mexico has long been a magnet for those seeking the peace of nature and seclusion. America’s greatest female painter, Georgia O’Keeffe, reinvented the language of art with her exotic canvases. You can retrace her footsteps with a night in the Mabel Dodge Luhan House where she and DH Lawrence both stayed in Taos. It is the original home of an American heiress who married a Native American and feels unchanged and authentic.
Today, the O’Keeffe Museum in Santa Fe is one of the most remarkable galleries, enthralling and inspiring, whereas the Millicent Rogers Museum is a less sophisticated and eccentric reminder of powerful women who found sanctuary in this ancient territory. The air is light, and the experiences are memorable. There are pockets of high luxury, such as the hotel surrounded by lavender fields with 100 different whiskies at the bar. The art of making visitors feel they are in wild but welcoming territory is potent and patent.
