Well it's 4am and I'm awake and, as we're not likely to have any wi-fi access for a week (maybe more) I thought, before we hit the wilderness, I'd do one last blog to round up our time in Santa Fe. Santa Fe is a very clean, very affluent and quite a liberal, arty mountain town; for those who've spent time in Aspen - it's like that, but with a more Mexican and Native American feel to it. Shops are expensive and rather posh. We spent the late afternoon in the touristy old town wandering around looking at the exceptionally nice but exceptionally overpriced wares on offer. We did find an exceptional art gallery - Pop Gallery - where both of us felt we could've spend a large proportion of a lottery win on many pieces and pay for them to be shipped back. New discoverys like Valery Milovic, Thomas Barbery, Marie Sena and Lynden St. Victor to name but a few were all keeping us entertained.
Both Miko and I have been suffering with a touch of altitude sickness, so we've been drinking lots of water and trying to boost our carbs so this evening we went to The Shed for some Mexican food.
We split a plate of House Guacamole, Salsa Corn Tortilla Chips and a bowl of Calabacitas - a warm salad of zucchini, yellow squash, corn onion and green chile to start and for our "entrees" we both had variations of the Enchilada and Taco Plate: One rolled, blue corn enchilada filled with cheddar cheese, onion and covered with red chile, One soft blue corn taco with cheddar cheese, lettuce, tomato, & choice of lean ground beef marinated in red chile or baked chicken drizzled with red chile,green chile or a side of salsa, served with pinto beans & mexican rice. I went for beef with red chile in the enchilada and chicken in the other and miko went for turkey sausage and chicken. We felt that the guacamole could benefit from some lime so my lime wedge that came with my margarita (which oddly came with a straw) went into it and , yes it it did taste better. The chicken and green chile combination was very tasty but the rest of the food didn't really deliver on the level that maybe we were expecting - it felt slightly santized, one step away from "real" mexican food. However the Calabacitas was outstanding - a perfect autumnal dish, very tasty and beautifully seasoned. The price of this meal was a very reasonable $55 (including tip) so we can't complain too much, but considering the James Beard award we did feel a bit let down.
The next port of call is The Very Large Array , Lake Lyman, then on to the Petrified Forest and Canyon De Chelly.