New Mexico

Matt and his partner Audrey live and work in Albuquerque. Matt is a medical provider (nurse practitioner) in a small community clinic and Audrey works in obstetrics at the University of the New Mexico hospital and at a nearby clinic.

The original motivation for our trip to the USA was to visit them in their new city. 

Matt has lived in multiple cities since he was in his final year of university and we hadn't visited him while he was living in any of them. 

He spent a semester in Senegal, a year in South Korea and two and a half years in Vietnam before going to Guatemala and Mexico for two and half years. He did come to join us in Mexico when we visited Nick there in 2022 but by then he was back at university studying nursing science. 

His did a residency in Seattle in 2025 which would have been a cool place to visit but we had just moved to Portugal and a trip back to the USA wasn't feasible that time.

So we made our first trip to visit him on his home turf.

We flew from Boston via Houston to Albuquerque on a Thursday night and were unexpectedly surprised by the effects of the 5300 feet (1,619m) altitude which left Anne breathless on the way from the airport gate to collect our luggage.

We had a trip the following day further north to a place called Jimenez hot springs on the day after we arrived.  We met John who I worked with and have been on many hikes and his wife, Angelika.  Matt and Audrey were working that day so Anne and I made my way in the little white Subaru that Matt had bought from me.

Jimenez hot springs

The water was as hot as a hot bath and we spent an hour hanging out and catching up in there.  I have to say that this is probably a better destination in the middle of winter but it was interesting because we started to feel a bit odd after a while.  Later we wondered if the altitude was also having an effect because it is another 1000ft higher than Albuquerque at 6100 (1900m).   We capped the visit off with some delicious pizza and locally brewed beer before driving back to Matt and Audrey's little adobe home.

Adobe house with Matt's VW beetle

Matt has bought a 1966 VW beetle which still has the original paintwork - it is a little worse for wear but runs great and plenty of people stopped and shouted encouragement to him either claiming that this was their first car, giving him the thumbs up or asking him if he wanted to sell it!

For the weekend Matt had booked us into an Earthship AirBnb in Taos.  We drove up on Saturday morning, crossing the Rio Grande river at a bridge that we had previously visited (in 2015) when Anne and I took a trip to Santa Fe and Taos.  The last time we were here we saw a few telephones at intervals on the bridge inviting people to make a call if they were feeling desperate.  This time there are signs prohibiting stopping on the bridge which might have resulted from what prompted them to put up the telephones originally.

We stopped at an overlook parking lot turnoff across the bridge with a small collection of vendors selling curios and a view of the gorge and the bridge.  The gorge is about 800ft deep here (240m).

Bridge over the Rio Grande in Toas

The Earthship houses were designed in the 1970s by Michael Reynolds who was looking for a way to build houses that used natural and recycled materials, were off-grid and used sustainable energy.  I was fascinated to see the Earthships when we arrived.  There are a number of them all built more more or less together in an area northwest of Taos.

AirBnb Earthship

The homes were intended to be buildable by someone with no specialized construction skills.  The back of the houses use earth-packed car tires with a mound of earth covering them on the south side.  The volume of earth provides heat shielding in the summer and maintains heat in the winter.  There are windows in the front facing north.  In our case there were also a few portable "swamp coolers" in the Earthship which kept it very cool.

Sitting room of the Earthship

Swamp coolers are an interesting design.  The concept dates back thousands of years but they are only really effective in very dry climates.  They rely on the fact that condensation cools wet material and were used in ancient times in doorways or windows where wet cloths were hung on dry, hot day to cool the air flowing in from the outside.

They began being mass produced around 1903 in the USA and got their nickname from the materials that were used in the early designs.   In areas where the climate was not dry enough  the air blown over the wet material could get a really musty odor reminiscent of a swamp when the air humidity was too high for effective use.  Matt and Audrey have one on the roof of their house that is essentially a big fan blowing through a filter that is continuously moistened by a reservoir of water.  It is very effective, cooling the house to around 20ºF  lower than the outside.  I've read that they are also used in Portugal where they are called climatizadores evaporativo.  They are effective in particular in the Alentejo region where it does get very hot and dry.

After we settled into the Earthship AirBnb I was keen to see what the night sky would be like in the outskirts of Taos and was not disappointed. 

Stars and the Earthship

I took a few test photos while I was setting up my camera to capture some star trails and in the one above, Matt volunteered to remove one of the solar lights stuck into the ground in the foreground because it was interfering with the shot.  The exposure was long enough that it captured the light illuminating the path Matt took with the light to the front door.

The star trails photo below is a composite of over 1600 images taken over a period of nearly two hours and then combined with software that our astronomer friend Marc showed me in South Africa last year.  The software is more commonly used to combine images with a telescope that tracks the earth's movement to give extremely clear images of galaxies when combined.   Multiple images of the same scene without tracking the stars yields light trails caused by the the earth's rotation and is very dramatic.  I always love the effect of the North Star which is a single point of light around which the remaining star's light rotates.

There are some straight lines which I think are a satellite and some airplane trails recorded during the multiple exposures, each of which were a few seconds apart.

Startrails using StarStax software

In the morning we walked from our Earthship towards some structures that had a Mad Max feel to them

Structures among the Earthships

Three dogs came to greet us, barking at us with wagging tails.  I wasn't about to trust them so we retreated even though a friendly neighbor drove past and stopped to tell us they would not hurt us.  He also said that these unusual structures were made by the same person who designed the Earthships and that he still visited Albuquerque occasionally.

There is a meditation pyramid with an interesting interior placed near these structures.

Matt cautiously approaching the Meditation pyramid

The walls inside have regularly spaced bottles embedded in them which also provide illumination near the top where the bottles are open to the sky.  It reminded me of some of the rooms in the famous Owl House in the Eastern Cape of South Africa.

Glass bottles inlaid in the walls inside the pyramid

On our way back from Taos we stopped for lunch at an amazing restaurant called the Tesuque Village Market.  It featured some great mural art

Tesuque Village Market mural

and the interior was very attractive

Interior of the market

The restaurant has a novel way of reducing the graffiti on the walls of their toilet.

Someone couldn't resist writing "ok" on the sign

The town also has a landscape feature that looks like a camel called "Camel rock".  It is visible from the highway and I was able to photograph it as we drove past.

Camel rock

The following Tuesday was Matt's day off.  Audrey also took a vacation day because Anne had booked us into a 90 min horse ride on the Ghost Ranch that was where Georgia O'Keefe spent most of her time between 1940 and 1980.

The ranch is situated in an incredible valley landscape which emerges suddenly as you crest a rise driving from the south.  The change from an environment predominantly tan and dark brown (like camel rock) into a vista with red, tan and khaki tones in a valley below is quite dramatic.

The scene feels like one from the many Westerns that I watched as a pre-teen at the local drive-in in Kimberley.  My dad was a big fan of westerns and would take the family to see them.  He had a huge collection of soft-cover westerns which is how I was introduced to voluntary reading during the summer vacations as a teenager after my brother described reading a western to being like watching a movie.

During the horse ride we learned that the movie "City Slickers" with Billy Crystal was filmed on this farm and we ended up re-watching it a few nights later to relive the scenery.

Breathtaking vista at the Ghost Ranch

The horses were docile and easy to ride, although I was warned that of all the horses, mine was the one that objected to all other other horses being nearby.  

In fact, we all watched while we were waiting to mount the horses as one of the wranglers went into the nearby paddock and unsuccessfully tried to rouse my horse (who was lying prone and napping).  A second person went over to help and I was thinking "I hope this isn't the horse I'll be riding", but it was.  

Anne freely admits that having daytime nap instantly leads to a bad temper and I expected the horse to have the same reaction.

At a stop on the 90 min trail in the ranch

So my horse spend most of the ride with his ears back.  

The wrangler riding behind me said it was because he was not the last one in the train and that her horse behind me was what was bothering him.  I had to hold him back a bit when we went through a couple of arroyos because he would pick up speed on the way up the other side and get too close to the horse in front of him, resulting in somewhat aggressive behavior.  

In the photo above the wrangler who took it said she'd position the mesa in the gap between me and the other horses so that I could use it as the excuse for the big gap, but the truth is that that was as close as my horse was willing to stand to the others without trying to give one of them a nip.

Anne and Matt ahead of us in an arroyo

Other than that, the ride was uneventful and a really enjoyable experience.

Anne and St Francis

Taos is around 7000ft (2000m) above sea level and after the trip when we returned home we were commenting on how these altitude differences affected Anne's breathing but the combination of driving, the two hour time difference and the altitude had also affected me.

In my case it was a bit of mental fog which caused some hilarity when I boldly asked Matt after we arrived back from Taos if the early star in the sky was Juniper.  "You mean Jupiter, right?" he said.   I was a little dumbfounded at the easy slip of the tongue and Anne pulled me aside and asked me if I was alright.  It wasn't till later on when I googled the effects of altitude changes that I realized that it is fairly common for a little mental confusion to creep in at altitudes like this and we were reassured that I wasn't suddenly showing signs of age-induced mental decline! 

The following day Anne and I were left to our own devices because both Matt and Audrey had to work.  They told us that we could take a free train ride to Santa Fe and so we joined number of other old people (60 and above get a free ride) heading for a day trip.

Anne's favorite Saint is St Francis and we visited a statue in front of the big cathedral above the Santa Fe plaza.

We visited the Aubuquerque museum and I took a little side trip to the most dangerous museum - a museum of rattlesnakes and various strange collectibles including an exhibit of Steve Irwin's TV show and a number of collectibles associated with it.

A friend from New England messaged me on to say that he and his wife would be in Albuquerque at the same time as us.  I asked him if he had two guitars because he has a legendary list of songs that he can sing (at last guess I'll bet it is close to 500).  We spent an afternoon catching up on our adventures (he has just retired) and playing songs.

On the Saturday Matt took us for a couple of walks to see some petroglyphs in the hills.  These are markings in the rocks made by the Pueblo people up to 800 years ago.

Petroglyphs

Later that evening we walked up to three small remnants of a volcanic eruption in the Rio Grande Rift.  A desolate looking walk which leads to a beautiful location for the sunset.

Walking to a sunset view - photo by Anne

One the way we came across a pair of coyotes who stopped to study us and then with an air of indifference loped across the path in front of us.  My phone had died but Anne was able to capture them.

We met with some birders on the Sunday.  It is amazing how many hummingbirds we saw in this very dry landscape. 

Hummingbird 

There were quite a few hovering and settling briefly in the trees along the path that we walked.  The nature center is in a reserve that runs along the Rio Grande in Albuquerque and we were treated so views of several bird species including a pair of young Great Horned Owls.

Great Horned Owl chicks

A few of Matt and Audrey's friends and neighbors came over for drinks and food in the evening.  It was great to meet them and find out more about their lives.

On our last day and we went with Matt to an archery range where he is trying out a new hobby.  Anne and I took turns shooting with a lightweight compound bow.

Anne and Matt at the archery range

The afternoon ended with a surprising downpour - a fairly rare event at this time of the year followed by a dinner at a Vietnamese restaurant that was open.  The day was Memorial day so quite a few shops and restaurants were closed.