Albuquerque? Absolutely! Visitors find enchantment in natives sites, museums
Visitors find enchantment in Albuquerque sites, museums

ACOMA PUEBLO, N.M. — It was perhaps the politest scolding I have ever received.

A guide, Gary, a member of the Acoma Pueblo of New Mexico, was mostly through the tour of Sky City, an American Indian village with no running water or electricity about 1½ hours from Albuquerque atop a 357-foot parched sandstone mesa. The surrounding area also is tribal land, and another guide, a chatty college student, was quick to jump on us when we strayed too close to a picturesque crag.

Land is sacred to the state's 19 tribes, or "pueblos,” and for us to traipse across it would amount to a spiritual transgression. Within an hour, I had committed another.

The view of the knobbed cacti and jagged pink rocks was spectacular. Gary's glance at us was not. Three of us had sat on a two-tier adobe bench that serves the village's 15 year-round families and several thousand off-site property owners as an open-air place for elders to deliberate. Slathered in sunscreen, with digital cameras dangling from our necks and sweat dripping from our foreheads, we were obviously not responsible village elders.

Where you are sitting is a place of extreme responsibility, Gary reminded us, urging us to go off into the world with our memory of the pueblo fresh and a notion of vicarious leadership to guide us. I smiled. A fellow travel writer even thanked him. Our other guide, however, apologized for Gary's impertinence. Gary's subtlety and that of Sky City stayed with me. If scolding me was his intent, I'll take one anytime.

Albuquerque is an unexpectedly cosmopolitan, clean city with neighborhoods that date back hundreds of years and upscale developments whose architecture aims somewhat to mimic them. Many visitors give Albuquerque barely a look as they fly in and pick up their rental cars, on the way to nearby Taos and Santa Fe. While Albuquerque, or ABQ, will never have the internationally acclaimed art presence of Santa Fe or the ski trails of Taos, treating it as a pass-through is to miss things that make it and the Southwest unique.

The bulk of the state's population lives near the city of more than 500,000, yet outdoor activities are close by, including skiing on 10,378-foot Sandia Peak, a quick drive down the highway from downtown and a gorgeous ride up the mountain's side on the world's longest tram.

Golf courses abound, and the city is one of the nation's most environmentally conscious. Its abundant green space shows it.

The food is delicious — not entirely Mexican, but similar; it's New Mexican cuisine, locals emphasize. Green peppers are fire-roasted and peeled before use. Red peppers are dried and hung on string-bound ristras and later ground up. If you have never tried a Hatch chile, named for the area where the chiles are grown, you have missed a culinary rite of passage. Even smelling a Hatch chile roasting is intoxicating. Eating them is a New Mexico communion.

Try El Pinto Restaurant, a must-visit eatery whose salsa sells in 30 states, including Oklahoma. If you go, ask for a tour of the salsa factory.

Albuquerque's climate, tourism officials are quick to point out, is not unbearable like a certain neighboring state to the west also known for its rugged landscape.

I visited the city as part of a travel writers group. I'll admit I was envious when I found out a co-worker was taking a similar trip to Taos, but I need not have been. The four days I spent in Albuquerque were not enough to take in everything. I didn't have time to see the Rattlesnake Museum in Old Town, the city's 300-year-old birthplace; or the Billy the Kid exhibit at the Albuquerque Museum of Art and History; or eat different types of chile-spiced fudge; or leisurely stroll through the art and exhibits at the Indian Pueblo Cultural Center; or spend an hour admiring the Torreon Fresco at the National Hispanic Cultural Center.

By the time he is finished, artist Frederico Vigil will have spent a decade of his life sketching and painting the 45-foot-tall interior walls of the Iberian-style tower with scenes that depict the bloody gallantry of Hispanic prehistory and history. When finished, the fresco will be every bit as striking as the renowned works of Diego Rivera and others in Mexico, where post-revolution murals were a combination of social commentary and art.

Vigil appropriately continues this tradition in a place dedicated to Hispanic culture.

But enough about what I didn't do. Here's what I did.

The state question of New Mexico — Red or green? — could be made Albuquerque-specific: How about Acoma or Zuni?

Spaniards who "discovered” New Mexico in the 16th century noted the separate, autonomous Indian towns. They surround Santa Fe and Albuquerque and dot Interstate 40 with modest homes, schools, truck stops and casinos.

The pueblos are in various stages of opening to outsiders. Some are closed off completely, while others open only for celebrations such as feast days for their patron saints; Acoma and Zuni pueblos have been open for years, with guided access, and since March have offered transportation, lunch and a guide from the Indian Pueblo Cultural Center.

The Acoma people are known for their black-and-white pottery. When made the traditional way, the potter collects clay from below the mesa, pulverizing it and mixing it with ground shards from pots to strengthen it, allowing the artisan to create the characteristically thin walls of the vessel by layering coils of clay. The potter thins the pot by methodically scraping the inside with a gourd. Chewed yucca leaves make brushes of varying widths.

It's tedious and precise work that requires a feel that has been passed from parent to child for centuries. Families have their own styles and distinctive forms; some prefer owls, a protective symbol, while others prefer more utilitarian designs. Every color and shape has a meaning.

The pots aren't cheap, but no two are alike, and any one would make a fine addition to a mantel or shelf. Expect to spend $50 or more for even small designs.

The Acoma people claim their 70-acre village is the oldest continuously inhabited city in the United States. It shows its age and the blend of cultures that makes the Southwest, and especially the high desert, intoxicating. Ladders lean onto the verandas of three-story homes, their tips pointing to the azure sky, a throwback to the days when villagers would pull them up to thwart attackers.

San Esteban del Rey Mission, a Catholic church that remains in operation and is built atop a sacred burial ground centuries old and deep in the earth, shows the liturgical compromises that helped ingratiate Catholicism with those in the New World. Rainbows and parrots, an unusual symbol of prosperity for the Acoma people, are painted on the walls of the 500-year-old place of worship, and the altar sits atop the cemetery. In the cemetery, speckled tombstones share space with veterans' markers. No photography is permitted inside the church or of the burial area.

The Acoma people consider the soil in the church sacred and curative, but sacred land isn't necessarily within tribal boundaries.

Petroglyph National Monument, the newest addition to the national park system, is blocks from the rapidly developing shore of the Rio Grande River and the bosque, or forest, that lines it. But going there feels like stepping into a prehistoric cave.

"I would characterize this as a living, sacred landscape,” Cultural Resource Program manager Gretchen Ward said of the park, the only such place created principally for the protection of rock carvings.

Some of the carvings are visible only at certain times of day, when the combination of shadows and sun provide the needed contrast. This likely was by design, although researchers disagree why. Others are half-buried, while others stare, looking at you look at them. Regardless, the effect is mesmerizing. Some of the designs are obviously anthropomorphic; others are known only to the carver and the best guesses of researchers.

"This is like an incredible canvas that was a means of communicating with the other world,” Ward said of the jutting, irregularly shaped black rocks, none of which appears like it belongs there. Because the people who carved them were ancestors of present-day Indians, some visit remote areas of the park to perform traditional rituals.

Ward asked us not to photograph faces and other anthropomorphic images out of respect for their continued meaning.

Perhaps more so than many other places, New Mexico appears, somehow, to retain tradition while embracing modernity. Subdivisions along choice alluvial land near the Rio Grande approach the park's boundaries, but a bottle of water and a willingness to walk a bit are all that are needed to wander away from civilization.

History is never more tangible than when you know that ages ago, someone stood exactly where you stand.

The "box effect” is an atmospheric anomaly that exists in a few places in the world — Albuquerque is its premier example — that allows hot-air balloons to take off from a spot and, when the winds are right, land in roughly the same spot. Instead of having a crew waiting at a balloon flight's end, the box effect means you can return near where you parked.

It's the box effect, the comfortable climate and the presence of ballooning pioneers that have made New Mexico's largest city the hot-air ballooning capitol of the world with its annual Albuquerque International Balloon Fiesta each October.

Typically, about 700 balloons participate.

It's a testament to ballooning's importance that Albuquerque is home to a well-stocked ballooning museum and attracts pilots like Mount Everest attracts climbers. The Anderson-Abruzzo Albuquerque International Balloon Museum will convert even the stoutest land-lubber into a balloon enthusiast, to say nothing of an actual ride thousands of feet above ground in a wicker basket. Its collection includes models and world record-breakers, and it offers a good overview of ballooning past and present.

My first ride in a balloon came while in New Mexico. Our pilot, Troy Bradley of Skyspan Adventures, who attempts to break endurance ballooning records when not taking tourists up for hourlong floats, comes from a Denver ballooning family. It's only natural he would end up in Albuquerque.

Six of us boarded the wicker basket of the balloon, while others were inflating a balloon in nearby empty fields. Unlike airplanes, balloons pretty much can take off and land wherever pilots can get permission. Our spot was a short walk away from the Rio Grande and a Starbucks.

What people say about ballooning is true: It's romantic, serene and gives an unmatched view of wherever you're hovering. What you don't realize until you take a balloon ride is that the periodic hiss of the burning propane that keeps the balloon inflated is loud and will warm the tops of even those of average height. But that's part of the fun. When the pilot isn't releasing propane, you're sinking, although you can scarcely tell. When the pilot pulls the gas lever, you climb.

We skimmed the surface of the river, within arm's length of the water, and rose to several thousand feet. Pilots rely on wind and knowledge of air currents at different altitudes to travel horizontally. To reach the appropriate heights, pilots burn propane. It obviously takes skill, and many pilots are just as cocky as their airplane-certified counterparts.

The tight fit in the basket caused me to look down, making my palms sweat at the thought I was one bump away from being halfway over the edge. Maybe I needed that, though; the ride was so prosaic that looking down was the only way to tell we were moving.

New Mexico has its share of Old West legends and modern lore. The atomic bomb was tested there, and Billy the Kid went on his killing spree there. The first continues to have repercussions for the world, while the second continues to captivate it. Albuquerque's museums are varied and include those dedicated to race car-driving local legend Al Unser Jr. and everything turquoise.

Then there's The National Atomic Museum.

On July 16, 1945, at a site code-named Trinity near Alamogordo, the military detonated the world's first nuclear weapon, a 20-kiloton device.

One of the city's more interesting museums pays tribute — patriotically and uncritically, but engrossingly nonetheless — to the weapons that kept the peace during the Cold War.

Outside the museum stands a full-size Trident missile, the kind ferried across the ocean in ballistic missile submarines. Seeing it, and another missile's layer-by-layer dissection inside the museum — including the multiple warheads, each intended to take out a city — made me physically sick. I appreciate the need for such weapons, but the experience made me nauseated. I have never felt that in a museum. I suppose the most intriguing part was seeing the hoses and fans inside a missile that, while I was growing up, would have been as highly classified as anything in the military. Now tourists can see that they are just machines — lethal machines that include many of the same parts you have in your car.

Around the corner from the various decommissioned American and Russian torpedoes and other weapons are full-size replicas of "Fat Man” and "Little Boy,” the bombs that ended World War II. The museum even has a "Broken Arrow,” or lost nuclear weapon, a dented B28 bomb that was accidentally dropped over Spain (it didn't detonate) in 1966 when two Air Force planes collided.

Three of the bombs were recovered quickly. The fourth, which is at the museum, was found at sea 80 days later.

The museum also includes exhibits about medical uses for radiation and the work of Marie Curie, an interactive area for children to learn about physics, and a detailed history of nuclear weapon evolution.

A guide at the museum even worked on the Manhattan Project. Although I wasn't able to see it, the Albuquerque Museum of Art and History had an exhibit through midsummer about Billy the Kid and his effect on our collective imagination.

Travel and accommodations provided by Albuquerque Convention and Visitors Bureau.

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