Just a day back home and time to re-pack before we set off for the other Mexico....New Mexico, or to be more precise, the city of Santa Fe.

Santa Fe, nicknamed the "City Different" is the oldest state capital in the US, the oldest European community west of the Mississippi and the oldest quite a few other things too! The city was established by the Spanish conquistadors in the early 17th century who together with Franciscan missionaries subjugated the Pueblo Indian population. Santa Fe became the capital of the Spanish Kingdom of New Mexico (present day New Mexico and Arizona) which it remained until Mexico was defeated in the Mexican American War of the 1840's and the territory became part of the United States.

History aside, Santa Fe today has a massive art scene, fantastic shopping, some great restaurants and situated at around 7000 feet above sea level in the northern part of New Mexico is located in the middle of some of the most spectacular scenery the US has to offer.

We are there with Adrian and Alison for no other reason than none of us had ever been and we had a few spare days! The weather is spectacular: cloudless sparkling blue skies, mild days and cold, crisp nights. There are many interesting and unusual lodging options, but we stay at the most unique....the Inn of the Five Graces. Set in the "historic Barrio de Analco, the oldest continuously inhabited neighbourhood" (yes....yet another "oldest"!) in the US, adobe-style architecture on the outside, but Tibetan-themed on the inside (the owners have a real obsession with all things Central Asian!).

A day wondering in and out of shops and museums in Santa Fe's historic centre was enough for us (well for some of us at least....). So the following day we set out to take a look at some of the area's non-retail options

Los Alamos is around an hour's drive north of Santa Fe. The town was created to house scientists and workers at Los Alamos National Laboratory, the home of the infamous Manhattan Project - the development and creation during World War II of the first nuclear bombs. The Laboratory it seems is as busy or even busier than ever and still employs more than 10,000 full-time workers.....doing what....🤫.

We bypass the town with its museums and monuments to the Manhattan Project and continue further west. Well we bypassed the town, but thanks to Apple maps we didn't bypass Los Alamos National Laboratory itself! What we initially though was a tollbooth turns out to be a military checkpoint. Adrian who is driving is asked for ID but unlike the vehicle in front of us we avoided further scrutiny and allowed to pass through with a warning not to stop or take photos.

So on we drive through the National Laboratory campus, fenced compounds surrounding low slung buildings, mysterious signs which appeared to be written in code and cameras everywhere. We don't stop and we certainly don't take any pictures as we make our way towards Valles Caldera National Preserve

The volcanic caldera situated at almost 9000 feet (2800 metres) resulted from the eruption and collapse of a mountain some one and a quarter of a million years ago. It has a diameter of some 14 miles and is, so we're told one of the world's best examples of an intact volcanic caldera. And we have it almost to ourselves! A short hike reveals very volcanic-looking soil punctuated with many holes of varying size - entrances to prairie dog burrows - preparation for the imminent onset of the bitterly cold winter. The caldera is also home to thousands of elk, but we'll have to take the ranger's word for that!

A few miles drive southeast back towards Santa Fe brings us to Bandelier National Monument. We park in the visitor centre and hike the Pueblo Loop Trail into Frijoles Canyon. Along this trail are some of the best examples of Pueblo Indian cliff dwellings just about all that remains of a once-thriving city-state thought at its height in the 14th and 15th centuries to have some 100,000 inhabitants

Our final port of call before heading home is the village of Chimayo some 30 miles north of Santa Fe along the very scenic "High Road to Taos" (a ski town in northern New Mexico) and much loved by Hollywood as a backdrop for Westerns! Other than being a somewhat picturesque village, Chimayo is home to El Santuario de Chimayo. The small adobe church, the "Lourdes of the Southwest" is built on the site where "believers say a mysterious light came from the ground on Good Friday, 1810 leading to the discovery of a large wooden crucifix beneath the earth". The chapel sits above a hole in the ground the dirt from which apparently has miraculous healing properties. Judging from the photos, messages, discarded medical and surgical paraphernalia in the room adjacent to the hole, not to mention large numbers of "pilgrims" I spotted carrying plastic bags of "holy dirt" (their description, not mine), many people believe.

We had been tipped off about Chimayo by a musician in the bar of our hotel who explained to us how her life had taken a definite turn for the better after a visit to El Santuario. Still a bit too soon for us to know one way or the other though....