The Land of Enchantment

We arrived in Sante Fe just as the afternoon's wild thunder and hail storm hit.

Cowgirl boots! Yours for only US $785- $980! How Bridget hankered after a particularly beautiful pink and green pair.

Sante Fe is full of many such shops.

All the turquoise, lapis lazuli and silver you could laden your denim shirt or cambric blouse with, should you have a spare $500.























Even the stalls outside the Palace of the Governors aren't cheap - but then, there are buyers aplenty.

























Blessed Kateri Tekakawitha, outside the Basilica. She was born in 1656 of Mohawk and Algonquin parents, both of whom died in a smallpox outbreak when she was four. Smallpox also left her with damaged eyesight and 'unsightly scars'. She became a devout Catholic, and, after persecution from her own community for her religious beliefs, ran away to a Native American community of Christians in Canada where she died aged 24.




On her deathbed, it is said, her scars fell away, revealing a woman of intense beauty. At her funeral many of those who were ill found themselves healed, and there several people reported visitations by Kateri after her death. In 1980 she became the first Native American Saint. Leonard Cohen was a fan.


Her statue stands outside the Cathedral Basilica of St Francis Assisi, and seems illustrative of the melding of two of the three main cultures in Sante Fe - the Native American, the Spanish, and the American Europeans. New Mexico was claimed as a Spanish Kingdom in 1540. Throughout the 1600s Spanish soldiers and Franciscan monks attempted to conquer and convert the Native Americans who lived in New Mexico, and the Spanish influence is seen in the lay-out of Sante Fe, centred around a central plaza.



5.00pm Mass in the Basilica, after the hailstorm.















































We had lunch in the gorgeous La Plazuela restaurant, an enclosed dining room inside the rebuilt 1607 La Fonda Inn.















Here it is in the 1920s.

After lunch, the road to Taos. More thunderstorms

...and rainbows.


In Taos we discovered the joys of the Quality Inn. Quality rooms, quality pool, quality pillows, high speed internet, cooked breakfast.

Hugh is the motel afficianado now - 'does it have a pool? Wifi? Breakfast? A fridge? A downstairs room (easy to mov bags) How much?'