October 3 The people who we are staying with for a couple of days are old friends of my mum’s, of course. Dick Ford is my mother’s mentor. He taught her as an undergraduate 25 years ago. He and his wife Karen, live in Santa Fe, New Mexico. They have two very sweet cuddly dogs, who made me miss Willow.
Dick is an archeologist and ethnobotanist. He goes out to different farms that have pictographs and inspires a sense of awe and responsibility in the farmers. They are much more interested in saving history when they feel like they are somehow connected to it. Some of the sites he has saved are the oldest and highest density of petroglyphs in New Mexico (over 7000 images). Since Momma is an archaeologist, I have seen some pretty spectacular things. But what we saw that day almost tops all. Every rock was covered with rock art. I would look up the slope and immediately I could identify 8 or 9. And those were only the obvious ones. Some of the pictographs were the oldest in New Mexico (8000 years old)! We probably saw 1000 petroglyphs that day.
October 4
Now we are leaving Santa Fe, but first we will go to the Farmers Market and cruise around looking at art galleries (stores that sell art).
The farmers market was amazing. The stalls were covered in fresh fruit, vegetables and breads. And the hot peppers—we don’t know the meaning of hot in Vancouver. The mild made my mouth burn. Though apparently the medium had less of a punch than the mild. They roast the chilies in something that looks like a cylindrical bingo machines (the kind that you turn with a crank and spits out numbers). The smell of chilies permeate the air, and now our car does too because we bought two bags of them.
Santa Fe is a town for artists. The building are all smooth lines and arches. The stores all have beautiful clothes and jewelry in the windows. And the art in the galleries was amazing. Some of my favorites were some west coast First Nation pieces. Except that they weren’t carved out of wood, but were blown glass. The art in this town is truly amazing -- the sheer quantities and excellence. Tonight we will stay in Albuquerque, with some more old friends of my mums from her days in Zuni.
October 5
We left later than planned, at 12:30. We are not early risers. So sped out of Albuquerque with a goal of reaching Deming, a town an hour before the Mexican border. Driving to Deming we passed through many different landscapes. There was one town that was built in front of a water dam. I wonder what would happen if the dam burst? I wouldn’t want to live there.
At one point the sky turned black and started dumping buckets of water on the highway. We couldn’t out of the front or my side of the car, it was all one big raindrop. But on Georgie’s side of the car, it was barely raining, and there was still blue sky! This rain was nothing like we get in Vancouver, our rain is nothing compared to this. After the storm cleared (which it did in about 20 min) we saw three rainbows. There were all extremely vibrant and in one, both ends touched the horizon.
We got to Deming late and went to bed later still. There was a very interesting Planet Earth on caves that was playing on the TV.
October 6
We are one hour from the border, and as soon as Georgie wakes up, we will leave. We want to get as far away from the border as possible today. I have been practicing my Spanish. Hear is what I can now say: Entiendes (do you understand), Habla englais? (do you speak English?) no hablo espanol (I don’t speak Spanish). Hopefully I will learn really quickly in Mexico.
We don’t think we will have internet for about a week, so don’t expect anything. We will be hanging around Northern Mexico for the next while.
The farmers market was amazing. The stalls were covered in fresh fruit, vegetables and breads. And the hot peppers—we don’t know the meaning of hot in 
