The Definition of 'The Middle of Nowhere'

During the first week back from our Christmas travels we were informed that Monday January 20th was a public holiday (Martin Luther King Day) and so decided to book another trip! This time it was a road trip through New Mexico.

Now if you live on a farm in the middle of the Gower, or a small retreat somewhere in Yorkshire or even in the Valleys, the Highlands etc, you do not live in the middle of nowhere. If you live in New Mexico on the other hand you hold every claim to that title. New Mexico is the land of tumble weeds, deserts, caves and mountains... And pretty much nothing else. 

The Drive

This was my first experience of renting a car and it all went surprisingly smoothly. That is as smoothly as 5 foreign exchange students renting a car to drive 1676.7miles in 4 days could go. The first hiccup was when we rolled up to a gas station for our first top up. Picture five girls in a tiny blue Ford Focus, two carrying coffee, two (one being me) fussing over which pump to use and the other attempting to swipe her dutch credit card at the pump and failing miserably... This was the view of the attendant who soon had the pleasure of dealing with our payment problem. Some fifteen minutes later we finally had petrol in the tank and were able to leave. 

The second hiccup was around midnight when I finally turned off the straight road we had been driving along for over 5 hours. The GPS lead us onto a side road, on which we were the only car, there were no buildings or street lights on either side of the road for the entire 50 miles we were on it. That was disheartening enough without the fact that the GPS estimated time of arrival was 00.08 and there was no way we were driving 50 miles in 8 minutes. We had planned our petrol stops around the ETA of 00.08 and so I really started to panic when I noticed the petrol gauge was approaching the red zone.. With all the girls in the back sleeping I didn't want panic to set in so decided to suggest to my roommate in the passenger seat that we should probably look for a petrol station soon... To which Julliane from behind shouted 'WE'RE OUT OF GAS?' turning the next ten minutes into a car ride full of screaming girls trying to plan our quick escape out of the wilderness. Luckily Marion spotted a button on the steering wheel which would bring up how many miles we had till empty and we were in the clear again. So far that it second my list of most frightening moments of my entire life. 

Santa Fe

Santa Fe, the capital of New Mexico, was our first stop after we recovered in a Super 8 Motel from the ordeal the night before. Santa Fe is beautiful but is like stepping back in time 100 years... The houses and buildings all look like the ones in the photo to the left and the whole town is what I can only imagine Mexico looking like (having never been there). It was warmer than Oklahoma but still not hot, although we were surrounded by desert.

The town was very artsy with statues, churches, paintings and galleries everywhere. In the main square (which was very small) they had a Saturday crafts market where several locals were selling their hand made goods, a lot of which were native American Indian pottery/jewellery. One of the jewellers asked me if I'd come from England to study Native Indians, I laughed and said yes, he pointed to himself and said 'well you're looking at all of them' the truth behind the joke was quite sad and I could see it was a topic they would usually take quite seriously.

We got to visit the oldest foundations of a house in the USA... I can't imagine why all those years ago no one decided to stay and make New Mexico the capital of the new USA. Similarly we saw the oldest church, which was not as small as I expected considering the size of the house and how tiny its doors were, anyone taller than me would have no chance going in, and that pretty much rules out 90% of the worlds population.

White Sands

The next stop was White Sands, located towards the south of New Mexico, and is exactly what it says on the tin; an area covered by white sand dunes that has been turned into a national park. It is awesome. Despite the fact the photo may look photoshopped - it is not - the park is just that picturesque. Being the cheesey travellers we are we stayed until sunset and it was beautiful although it got cold, fast. 

While the sun was still up we took the chance to re-live our youth and slide the dune in toboggans... The race was Wales against Sweden, both set off at good speed but it was a sad day for Wales when Sweden finally won. Wales got scared half way down and decided to stop for a bit of sightseeing before being peer pressured into finishing the race.  

By now the second day had come to an end, still two more to go, which will be covered in the next post :)