Maddy's Travels
Tango Shoes and Hiking Boots
New Mexico, November 2010
PART ONE: ALBUQUERQUE TANGO FESTIVAL:
Favorite dance partner: young man wearing T-shirt that said “Cougar Bait”. “Iʼll bite” I said. The next night he had on a different shirt and I asked if he was only dancing with younger women. (He wasnʼt).
Favorite event: “Guerilla Milonga”. We piled onto a bus and alighted in four different locations where we danced in public - a hotel lobby, the airport, a cafe, a bistro. Imagine getting off your airplane and seeing 30 people dancing Argentine Tango at the top of the escalator.
Delicious food throughout trip. Red chili and green chili. Southwestern cuisine is not Mexican. Mexican smothers everything with tomato based salsa. New Mexicans smother it with a chili based concoction. Green chili: the peppers are picked green, roasted, peeled and mashed up. Red chili: the peppers become red after being green and are dried and ground up. At every restaurant you are asked “red or green”? If you say both, you are ordering “Christmas style”. One color is not necessarily hotter than the other - it depends on the chili.
PART TWO: THE CAVE:
Small Heading
Left to right:
Entrance to cave, inside cave, bathtub in cave (tile work by Shel)
Linda B flew out from Boston and we headed north of Santa Fe to visit Shel (best friend from college, artist extraordinaire) and wife Liz in Embudo, New Mexico. We stayed in the guest cave - mind you, this is not a primitive cave. The mountains are sandstone. A local artist carves out caves, several stories high, skylights, interior staircases, bas reliefs, electricity, running water, beautiful ceramic bathtub, but alas, no toilet. The outhouse remains slightly inconvenient in the middle of the night, but affords a fabulous view of starry skies.
My hiking boots were happy. They are always begging to be used. I donʼt oblige them very often. I especially loved our “silent hike” and not having cellphone service. At the end of our trip, Linda received huge demerits from me on her poor re-entry skills to the world outside Embudo. As we drove away, me still feeling “in the la la zone” her phone rang. It was her accountant. She answered.
