The day I got a compliment from a cowboy… [S.O.F.T.]

“Woke up high over Albuquerque, on a jet to the promised land.” The Band. Champagne Dame is still enjoying her journey through America. Here, she has some interesting encounters along her journey…

Santa Fe’s dusty dirt roads, and beautiful adobe houses, with the brilliant blue woodwork was truly gorgeous. The old part of town, has no footpaths. I loved the town, loved the people, loved the cowboys… Well they were very hip cool and arty cowboys. They raised their hats.  “Ma’m, that is a mighty perty hat.” For some reason they liked my brilliant blue sunhat and my new Navajo fetish necklace, which I was told was a good quality one, not that I knew the difference between a good and a bad one.

The Loretto Chapel and it’ s miraculous stairway, it was interesting… I’m not sure if it was a religious spin by the church or a real miracle? Perhaps a bit of both. The very pretty church was built without a staircase, so the nuns could not get to the chorister. They prayed for nine days. A novena and a lone old cowboy turned up on a mule with basic tools and no wood. He locked the doors and in three months built a circulator stairwell and then disappeared… The wood is an Arctic type pine, unobtainable in New Mexico, and so the legend grew!

There was a Mexican mariachi band playing in the Santa Fe Plaza as a wedding wound its way around the square. Goodness it was HOT and DUSTY. The native Indians sat in the shade of the adobe veranda’s selling even more jewellery. I am just about jewelleried-out. My suitcase is nearly overflowing! The town had a really good vibe. A mixture between South Western America cowboy and art. Canyon Road and its row upon row of brilliant art galleries and sculpture after sculpture was bright, colourful and expensive!

On the way to Albuquerque we stopped off at MADrid, an old dry and dusty hippy town that had strange vibes. As the wagon rolled in and old hippy codger skateboarded down the main drag, his grey dreadlocks flowing in the breeze… If you saw the movie ‘Wild Hogs’, which was not on my last of art house movies to watch (we saw it on the bus!), it was set in MADrid. The locals all talked wistfully of how one day they would like to travel. ‘Twas a bit ‘Paris, Texas’ if you saw that movie!

At Albuquerque we rode the cable cars high up into the Sandia Mountain for a High Finance Dinner. I’m not sure why it was called that, but it was high over Albuquerque with spectacular views, and a spectacular ascent and descent. It was very hot even up that high. To think that in winter it is a ski resort!

The white gypsum sands of White Sands, near Las Cruces were the one thing I did not enjoy. It was so dang hot. We were expected to slide down the dunes. For me it was very much ‘mad dogs and Englishmen.’ I was mumbling about margaritas around the pool. It took forever to get there and back, with zero interest from me. We were scrutinised by the border control, unusual to be searched on a tourist bus… What did they think we were hiding in the bus loo? Richard Branson has his Virgin Galactic for suborbital flights somewhere near here.

Then at high noon, we reached Tombstone!!! This was the highlight for many on the wagon. Dang, it was HOT. It was similar to the gold mining town tourist attractions in OZ, but was slightly more exciting because it was, what it was, We also had been hyped up on the bus watching the movie, it does pass the time when you are driving through desert.

My first stop was Madam Moustache to get my photo taken in the saloon bar in suitably tarty attire… They are not for blog publication, but are on my Facebook! I bought a sheriff and marshals badge, as one would expect. Then it was the shoot out at the OK Coral… Appalling acting, but the gunfire made me jump in the air, which does not make good photos!

The on to Boot Hill, the burial site of the cowboys shot in the Wyatt Earp shoot out, by then my green cowboy boots, which I had worn without socks were giving me blisters and I was walking like I had just got off my Hoss! It was a great relief to get on an air conditioned bus, and leave the cowboys in the searing hot sun.

Have you ever received a compliment from a local while travelling? Where where you and what was it for?