I saw a UFO but nobody believed me ….

Heading deeper and deeper into the wilds of New Mexico, we arrived into hot and dusty Carlsbad. The hotel clerk was being legalistic about the check in time of 3 pm, so nothing for it but to spend a heady afternoon in the Laundromat. What is an afternoon in the Laundromat without some tasty snacks?

Our reason for being in Carlsbad was to go to the Carlsbad Caverns, some enormous caves just south of town. We did a self-guided trail into the Big Room, which is the largest single cave chamber in North America, the size of 6.3 football fields. (The “Football Field” is the SI unit of measurement of large land areas, in the same way that the “Sydney Harbour” is the unit of measure for bodies of water). In the afternoon, we did a guided “adventure cave tour” to the dramatically named “Lower Cave”.  Apart from a couple of ladders and a small crawl, it was adventure for woosies, but still a fun afternoon.  However this is a cave system with an elevator and underground restrooms, so anything more is considered extreme adventure.

Our drive north to Santa Fe involved stopping in the town of Roswell, UFO Central. We stopped at the pretty lame but entirely necessary “UFO Museum and Research Centre” which majored on the “Roswell Incident of 1947” – a crash landing of an alien space ship and the finding of 4 alien bodies, or perhaps just the crash of a weather balloon, depending on the size of your conspiracy gland. The truth is out there……..

To Santa Fe and beyond. Santa Fe is the state capital of New Mexico, but a little like a hick country town. The centre of the city is really quiet and low key, with lots of interesting adobe buildings full of tacky souvenirs shops and wild west clothing – big hats, big belt buckles and lots of fringing.  The next day we took a trip out of town to Taos, and in particular the Taos Pueblo which has been occupied continuously by Pueblo Indians for 1000 years. By now the weather was getting really cold and it started to snow. Hard to believe we had heat and raised dust 2 days ago. At least I get to wear my entire wardrobe.

Today we went to the Kasha-Katuwe Tent Rocks National Monument which is a little known area south of Santa Fe. It should be on the major sights trail cos it is a real gem! There’s a great little trail through a narrow slot canyon and then a short climb to a fantastic (but freezing) view. All through the canyon are these fantastic towers and spires that seem inspired by Dr Suess. With 4 cameras on the go, you can believe that it took us ages to do the trail, another great shot around every bend.