New Mexico Tourism Info. Discount Santa Fe Hotels, Albuquerque.

New Mexico Tourism Info. Discount Santa Fe Hotels, Albuquerque. We are your Guide to New Mexico Tourism. We Offer the Best Travel Deals, discount Santa Fe Hotels and Albuquerque lodging options available anywhere.

Settled in turn by the Native Indians, Spaniards, Mexicans and yes Yankees, the State of NEW MEXICO is among the most ethnically and culturally diverse of all the states in the US. Each successive group has built upon the heritage of its predecessors: their various histories and accomplishments are closely intertwined, and in some ways the late coming Anglo Americans from the north and east have had comparatively little impact. Signs of the region's rich heritage are everywhere, from ancient pictographs and cliff dwellings to the design of the states license plates, taken from a Zia Indian symbol for the sun, the one near-constant fact of life in this arid land.

New Mexicos indigenous peoples, especially the Pueblo Indians , as the name suggests clear descendants of the Ancestral Puebloans - provide a sense of cultural continuity. Despite the Pueblo Revolt of 1680, which forced a temporary Spanish withdrawal into Mexico, the missionary endeavor here was in general less brutal than elsewhere. The proselytizing padres eventually co opted the natives without destroying their traditional ways of life, as local deities and celebrations were incorporated into Catholic practice. Somewhat bizarrely to outsiders, grand churches still stand at the center of many Pueblo settlements, often adjacent to the underground ceremonial chambers known as kivas, and almost always built in the local adobe fashion.

Check Out Our Discount Santa Fe Hotels and Cheap Albuquerque Hotels Guide.

The Americans who took over from the Mexicans in 1848 saw New Mexico as a vast wasteland. But for a few mining booms and range wars such as the Lincoln County War, which brought Billy the Kid to fame, New Mexico was left relatively undisturbed until it finally became a state in 1912. During World War II, it was the base of operations for the top secret Manhattan Project, which assembled and detonated the first atomic bomb, and since then it has been home to one of the premier weapons research outposts in America. By and large, people here work close to the land, mining, farming and ranching, with tourism increasingly underpinning the economy.

Northern New Mexico centers on the magnificent landscapes of the Rio Grande Valley , which contains its two finest cities: Santa Fe, the adobe fronted capital, and the artists colony and winter resort of Taos New Mexico, with its nearby pueblo. Dozens of Pueblo villages can be found in the mountainous area between the two, while to the west lies the evocative ancient ruins at Bandelier and Puyé. The broad swath of central New Mexico along I - 40, the interstate highway that succeeded the old Route 66, pivots around the largest city in the State, Albuquerque, with the extraordinary mesa top Pueblo village of Ácoma Sky City an hr. drive to the west. In wild and wide-open southern New Mexico , the deep Carlsbad Caverns are the main attraction, while you can still stumble upon old mining and cattle-ranching towns that have somehow hung on since the end of the Wild West.

For most visitors, the defining feature of New Mexico is its adobe architecture, as seen on homes, chapels, and even shopping malls and motels. Adobe bricks are a sunbaked mixture of earth, sand, charcoal and chopped grass or straw, set with a mortar of much the same composition, and then plastered over with mud and straw. The color of the soil used dictates the color of the final building, and thus subtle variations can be seen all across the state. However, adobe is a far from convenient material: it needs replastering every few years and turns to mud when water seeps up from the ground, so that many buildings have to be sporadically raised and bolstered by the insertion of rocks at their base. These days, most of what looks like adobe is actually painted cement or concrete, but even this looks attractive enough in its own semi-kitsch way, and hunting out such superb old adobes as the remote Santuario de Chimayó on the High Road between Taos and Santa Fe, the formidable church of San Francisco de Asis in Ranchos de Taos, or the multitiered dwellings of Taos Pueblo , can provide the focus of an enjoyable New Mexico tour.

You will also become familiar with another New Mexico trademark, the bright red ristras, or strings of dried chili peppers , that adorn doorways throughout the state: festooned on restaurant entrances, they serve as warnings of the fiery delights that await within.
Albuquerque New Mexico
Sprawling at the heart of the State of New Mexico, where the main east west road and rail routes cross both the Rio Grande and the old road south to Mexico, ALBUQUERQUE is with half a million people, only major metropolis in the State. Though most tourists dash straight from the airport up to Santa Fe, without a thought for Albuquerque, the Duke City has a good deal going for it. Like Phoenix Arizona, it has grown a bit too fast for comfort in the last fifty years, but the original Hispanic settlements are still discernible at its core, and the diverse, cosmopolitan population gives it a rare cultural vibrancy. Even if its architecture is often uninspiring, the setting is marvelous, wedged between the Rio Grande, lined by stately cottonwoods and the mystical, glowing Sandia Mountains. Specific highlights for visitors include the intact Spanish plaza , the neon-lit Route 66 frontage of Central Avenue and the excellent Indian Pueblo Cultural Center ; while every October Albuquerque hosts the nation's largest hot-air balloon rally, attracting upward of 110,000 people to its mass ascensions.

Old Town Albuquerque New Mexico
Once you've cruised up and down Central Avenue , looking at the flashing neon and 1940s architecture of this twenty-mile stretch of Route 66 (Sun Tran buses do it all day for 75¢), most of what's interesting about Albuquerque is concentrated in Old Town , the recently tidied-up old Spanish heart of the city. As the billboards on the interstate nearby rightly proclaim, "it's darned old and historic. "The tree filled main plaza is overlooked by the twin-towered adobe facade of San Felipe de Neri church , and circled by horse-drawn carriages that you can hop on for a short tour ($5). It's a very pleasant place to wander or have a meal, even if there's not a whole lot otherwise to do. One of the more bizarre of the many knickknack shops is the Rattlesnake Museum southeast of the plaza at 202 San Felipe St NW (daily 10am-6pm; $2), which has live rattlers on display. Nearby, Gus's Trading Post, at 2026 Central Ave NW, is one of the best-value shops in the Southwest for buying the perfect bolo tie or other pieces of Indian jewelry .

Still on Central Avenue, in the Old Town Shopping Center half a block west of the plaza, the intriguing little Turquoise Museum Monday - Saturday 9.30a.m. - 5.30p.m. $2.00 may look like just another mall store, but turns out to be more of a fortified bank vault, filled with rare and beautiful turquoise nuggets. The New Mexico Museum of Natural History , four blocks northeast of the plaza at 1801 Mountain Road NW daily 9a.m. - 5p.m. closed Mon in Jan and Sept; $5.00, has full-scale, animated models of dinosaurs, a simulated volcanic eruption and a replica of an Ice Age snow cave, as well as an engaging, touchable collection of fossils and dinosaur bones.
Santa Fe New Mexico
Since the early 1980s, SANTA FE NEW MEXICO has ranked among the chicest destinations in the US, regularly voted the country's most popular city by upmarket travelers. That appeal rests on a very solid basis: it's one of America's oldest and most beautiful cities, founded by Spanish missionaries as their northernmost colonial capital in 1609, a full ten years before the Pilgrims reached Plymouth Rock. Spread across a high plateau at the foot of the stunning Sangre de Cristo Mountains, the capital of New Mexico still glories in the adobe houses and baroque churches of its original architects, while its newer museums and galleries attract art lovers from all over the world.

As upward of a million and a half tourists every year descend upon a town of just sixty thousand inhabitants, Santa Fe New Mexico has inevitably grown somewhat overblown; long-term residents bemoan what's been lost, while first time visitors are inclined to wonder what all the fuss is about. The urban sprawl as you approach from the interstate makes for a lousy introduction, while the rigorous insistence that every downtown building should look like a seventeenth century Spanish colonial palace takes a bit of getting used to. This is the only city in the world where what at first glance appears to be a perfectly preserved ancient adobe turns out to be a high rise parking lot, and it would be illegal to build a gas station that didn't resemble an Indian prayer chamber.

There is still a lot to like about Santa Fe New Mexico, however, with its compact, peaceful downtown and walkable streets. Though Santa Fe style may have become something of a cliché, that cliché is changing: the pastel painted, wooden coyotes that were the obligatory souvenir ten years ago have, for example, been replaced by cast-iron sculptures of Kokopelli, the hunch backed Ancestral Puebloan flute player. In a town where the Yellow Pages list over 250 art galleries, you will get plenty of opportunities to buy one.
ARRIVAL, INFORMATION AND GETTING AROUND SANTA FE NEW MEXICO.
Despite its fame, Santa Fe is well off the beaten track. Most out-of-state visitors fly into Albuquerque, and either rent a vehicle at the airport for the hour's drive up to Santa Fe, or catch a shuttle van for around $25 with either Gray Line tel. 1-800-256-8991 or Twin Hearts Express tel. 1-800-654-9456. Buses from all over the Southwest to the Greyhound terminal at 858 St. Michaels Drive, a long way from the towns central plaza, include four daily buses to and from Albuquerque New Mexico $10; tel 505 471-0008. There is no direct rail link, but Lamy Shuttle vans tel 505 982-8829 meet Amtrak trains to Lamy, seventeen miles to the Southeast.

The Albuquerque city visitor center, two blocks northwest of the plaza in the lobby of the Albuquerque Convention Center, 201 W Marcy St Monday - Friday 8a.m. - 5p.m. tel 505-955-6200 or 1-800-777-2489, stocks a very limited selection of brochures, but the New Mexico Department of Tourism, 491 Old Santa Fe Trail June-Aug Mon-Fri 8am-7pm, otherwise Mon-Fri 8am-5pm; tel 505-827-7336 or 1-800 545-2040, has racks of material on the whole state.

Most of what there is to see lies within walking distance of the plaza at the heart of the old town, but it's worth knowing about the Santa Fe Trails bus service, based at the Sheridan Transit Center, a block northwest of the plaza on Sandoval Street Mon-Fri 6.30am-10.30pm, Sat 8am-8pm: tel 505/955-2001: flat fare 50¢ Routes #21-23 run up Cerrillos Road, while route #10 loops between the plaza and the outlying museums, half hourly in summer and hourly in winter. The only taxi company in Santa Fe is Capital City Cabs tel. 505-438-0000: bikes can be rented at Sun Mountain Bike Company, 107 Washington Ave tel 505-820-2902. For a walking tour of town, contact Afoot in Santa Fe New Mexico, based in the Inn at Loretto, 211 Old Santa Fe Trail daily 9.30a.m. and 1.30p.m. $10.00 tel 505-983-3701.
Downtown Santa Fe New Mexico
Santa Fe's old central plaza is still the focus of town life, especially during the annual Indian Market on the weekend after the third Thursday in August, when buyers and craftspeople come from all over the world, and during the Labor Day weekend for the Fiestas de Santa Fe . Apart from an influx of art galleries and stylish restaurants, the web of narrow streets around the plaza has changed little through the centuries. When the Yankees took over in 1848, they neglected the adobes and chose instead to build in wood, but many of the finer adobe houses have survived. Since a preservation campaign in the 1930s, almost every non adobe structure within sight of the plaza has been designed or redecorated to suit the city mandated Pueblo Revival mode, with rounded, mud-colored plaster walls supporting roof beams made of thick pine logs. Santa Fe today, in fact at least at its core looks much more like its original Spanish self than it did a hundred years ago.

The Palace of the Governors fills the entire northern side of the plaza. Part of the Museum of New Mexico, this low-slung and initially unprepossessing structure is actually the oldest public building in America. Originally sod roofed, it was constructed in 1610 as the headquarters of the Spanish colonial administration; the name may now seem misleadingly grand, but the building was once much larger. Its well preserved interior, organized around an open air courtyard, holds excellent displays on New Mexican history, plus photos showing that until 1913 the palace itself looked like a typical, formal, territorial building, with a square tower at each corner. Its subsequent adobe reconstruction was based on pure conjecture. The arcaded adobe veranda along its front, offering protection from both sun and wind, serves as a market for local Native American crafts sellers.

Just west of the palace, the Museum of Fine Arts is housed in a particularly attractive adobe, with ornamental beams and a cool central courtyard. Its also one of the few major art museums to be established by artists, as opposed to educators or collectors, and focuses on changing exhibits of contemporary painting and sculpture by mostly local artists. The showpiece Georgia O'Keeffe Museum , a block northwest at 217 Johnson St November - June Mon, Tues, Thurs, Sat and Sun 10am-5pm, Fri 10am-8pm July - October also open Wed noon-8pm; $5, free Fri 5-8pm, owns the largest collection of O'Keeffes in the world, including many of the desert landscapes she painted near Abiquiu , forty miles northwest of Santa Fe, where she lived from 1946 until her death in 1986. In its permanent collection, housed in its first two galleries, some less familiar New York cityscapes make a surprising contrast among the sun-bleached skulls and iconic flowers, as sold in print galleries throughout the Southwest. However, most of the museum is given over to touring exhibitions devoted to differing aspects of O'Keeffe's work, typically on show for three to four months, so there's little guarantee as to which precise pieces may be displayed at any one time.

Across the tiny Santa Fe River to the southwest, three blocks along Guadalupe Street, you will find a less celebrated but equally attractive little district, centered around the small Santuario de Guadalupe May through Oct Monday - Saturday 9a.m. - 4p.m. November - April Monday - Friday 9a.m. - 4p.m. donation. Complete with a fine Baroque reredos altarpiece, the shrine was built at the end of the eighteenth century to mark the end of the Camino Real highway from Mexico City. Old warehouses and small factory premises nearby, such as the Sanbusco Centre on Montezuma Avenue, have been converted to house boutiques, art galleries and restaurants.

Follow the river upstream, or walk two blocks east from the plaza, and you approach St. Francis Cathedral, looming at the top of San Francisco Street. The first church west of the Mississippi to be designated a cathedral, it was commissioned in 1869 in the formal and, frankly, dreary Romanesque style popular in France by Archbishop Lamy, the French educated title figure in Willa Cathers novel Death Comes for the Archbishop. The nearby Loretto Chapel, a block away at the start of Old Santa Fe Trail, is known for its so called Miraculous Staircase, an elegant spiral built without nails or obvious means of support. During construction, the church's designer is said to have been killed by Lamys cousin, so that for years there was no way up to the choir loft. According to legend, an unknown carpenter arrived in answer to the nuns' prayers, built the stairs and then disappeared.

Two blocks south, across the river along the Old Santa Fe Trail, is the ancient San Miguel Mission Monday - Saturdays 9a.m. - 5p.m., Sundays 1.30-4p.m. $1:00. Only a few of the massive adobe internal walls survive from the original 1610 building, most of which was destroyed in the 1680 Pueblo Revolt. The chapel is the heart of the old Barrio de Analco workers' district, whose many two-hundred-year-old houses now form one of the most appealing residential neighborhoods in Santa Fe New Mexico.

Not far away to the east, gallery lined Canyon Road, which stakes a claim to being the oldest street in the US, dating from Pueblo days, climbs a steady but shallow incline along the riverbed and is lined by dozens of fine adobes.
Santa Fe New Mexico Dining
Santa Fe has the range of nightlife you would expect in a small city rather than a major metropolis, though its cultural scene livens up in summer. For full listings of whats going on, check the free weekly Reporter or the Pasatiempo section of Fridays New Mexican. The much anticipated Santa Fe Opera season runs through July and August in a magnificent renovated amphitheater seven miles north of town tel 505 986-5900 or 1-800 280-4654

Some of the most atmospheric places to drink in town are in the old hotels, the downstairs lounge and rooftop bar of La Fonda on the plaza spring to mind, but otherwise conventional bars are surprisingly few and far between.

Catamount Bar 125 E Water St tel 505 988-7222. Downtown bar with plenty of microbrewed beers on tap, and live rock or blues most nights.

Cowgirl Hall of Fame 319 S Guadalupe St tel 505 982-2565. Very busy country and western themed restaurant and bar, with regular live music.

The Dragon Room Pink Adobe, 406 Old Santa Fe Trail tel 505 983-7712. Classy, atmospheric bar in romantic 300 year old adobe restaurant facing the San Miguel Mission, with eccentric décor and an eclectic mix of regulars.

El Farol 808 Canyon Rd tel 505 983-9912. Historic bar cum restaurant that serves Spanish tapas to a musical accompaniment from blues to flamenco.

Evangelos 200 W San Francisco St tel 505 982-9014. The only good bare-bones bar in easy walking range of the plaza, with a pool table, a jukebox, and occasional live music.

The Paramount and Bar B 331 Sandoval St tel 505 982-8999. Cool, glamorous former restaurant that's become Santa Fe's premier venue for clubbing and alternative live music the smaller Bar B programs its own specialized appeal events.
Taos New Mexico
Still home to one of the longest established Native American populations in the United States, though transformed by becoming first a Spanish colonial outpost, and more recently a hangout for bohemian artists and New Age dropouts, TAOS which rhymes with mouse has become famous out of all proportion to its size. Just six thousand people live in its three component parts: Taos itself, around the plaza; sprawling Ranchos de Taos New Mexico, three miles to the south; and the Native American community of Taos Pueblo , two miles north.

Beyond the usual unsightly highway sprawl, Taos is a delight to visit. As well as museums, galleries and stores to match Santa Fe, it still offers an unhurried pace and charm, and the sense of a meeting place between Pueblo, Hispanic and American cultures. Its reputation as an arts colony began at the end of the nineteenth century, with the arrival of painter Joseph Henry Sharp. He was soon joined by two young New Yorkers, Bert Phillips and Ernest L. Blumenschein: legend has it that their wagon lost a wheel outside Taos as they headed for Mexico in 1898, and they liked it so much they never got round to leaving. The three men formed the nucleus of the Taos Society of Artists , established in 1915. Soon afterwards, society heiress and arts patron Mabel Dodge arrived, and married an Indian from the Pueblo to become Mabel Dodge Luhan. She in turn wrote a fan letter to English novelist D.H. Lawrence , who visited three times in the early 1920s; his widow Frieda made her home in Taos after his death. New generations of artists and writers have "discovered" Taos ever since, but the most famous of all was Georgia O'Keeffe , who stayed for a few years at the end of the 1920s. Her renditions of the church at Ranchos de Taos in particular were a major influence on contemporary Southwestern art.
ARRIVAL, INFORMATION AND GETTING AROUND TAOS NEW MEXICO
Two daily Greyhound and TNM&O buses from Albuquerque $22 and Santa Fe $11 arrive at Taos Bus Center tel 505 758-1144, opposite the well-equipped local visitor center , two miles south of the plaza at the intersection of Hwy-68 and US -64 daily 9am-5pm tel 505 758-3873 or 1-800 816-1516. Faust Transportation tel 505 758-3410 also connects Taos with Santa Fe $25 and the Albuquerque airport one way $35, round trip $65.

Walking is the best way to get around the compact center, while Chile Line buses tel 505 751-4459 cover a twelve mile route along the highway, and trolley tours visit the main attractions Historic Taos Trolley Tours: May-Oct twice daily from visitor center and plaza; $33; tel 505 751-0366. Another option is to rent a bike from Cottam's, 207A Paseo del Pueblo Sur tel 505 758-2822.
TAOS SKI VALLEY
Fifteen miles north of Taos, reached via an attractive road that winds up through a narrow gap in the mountains from the village of Arroyo Seco, lie the challenging slopes of Taos Ski Valley. Located on the north flank of Wheeler Peak, the highest point in New Mexico at 13,161ft, the demanding runs are usually open to skiers, snowboarding, incredibly, continues to be banned on the slopes between late November and early April lift tickets $45 tel 505 776-2291, resort reservations tel 1-800 992-7669

New Mexico Tourism: Includes Albuquerque Hotels, Santa Fe Hotels, Lodging Discounts and more.
New Mexico Tourism