Things get Spicy in New Mexico

My suitcase and I had our first real fight this past weekend while visiting New Mexico.  The fight was centered around a cactus… yes a cactus!  Now, let me explain myself before you judge. 

So I have never really been a big shopper.  I don’t see the need to accumulate useless crap.  In my mind, it’s all just junk that is going to end up in the neighborhood yard sale in a few years.  With that in mind, I found myself in Santa Fe, New Mexico over the weekend.  Now for those of you who have never been, “downtown” Santa Fe, it is a plaza.  Literally a Plaza.  While charming and unique, there is not much to do there.  I happen to have three hours to tackle this town by myself, which is what brings me to the shopping. 

The downtown area has some real cute shops that sell some interesting products.  Let me tell you, if you are in the market for boots, hats, or Native American jewelry…you have come to the right place!  Perhaps the most interesting thing I saw there was the assortment of hot sauces!  The names on the sauces made me laugh out loud!  They had alien sauce, hemorrhoid sauce, and diaper sauce. 

It was just passed the hot sauce when I found it: the holy grail of dumb gifts.  It was a cactus back scratcher!  I had to have it…a long stick with a prickly little cactus that had eyeballs on it- priced at only $8.99!  Umm…who could resist?  Not me!  It seemed harmless at the time, so I walked out, holding my head high and proud of my new purchase.

So the stupid cactus ended up in the trunk of the rental car for the next few days while we drove to Albuquerque.  Now Santa Fe may be a plaza, but Albuquerque is a street.  Yes, the downtown area is ONE main street.  Needless to say, we saw all of downtown in about a half hour.  As you may know, I get bored easily and so one street for 24 hours is not gonna do the job for me.  Thanks to some lovely recommendations, we dined at the infamous “El Pinto” restaurant which has been visited by several famous politicians.  Ahhh... southwestern food with chile sauce....Yummy! 

Another recommendation brought us to the tram ride up the top of the Sandia Mountains.  $20 will get you a round trip ride up the world’s longest tram ride (I think that is what the sign said) up the “watermelon” granite mountains.  We even saw wild buffalo and hot air balloons on the way, which for some reason seemed exciting at the time.  

Okay so now the trip to NM was over (what do you expect in a long weekend?) and it was time to head home.  I packed my suitcase as I have done hundreds of times before.  Only this time, I was shoving trinkets in it from Santa Fe, one of which was the cactus back scratcher!  Uh oh- my suitcase was suddenly full, the zipper wasn’t gonna budge.  So here I was, at the airport fighting with a stubborn (and cranky) suitcase with a dumb ass cactus staring at me (it has eyeballs).  This was a full-fledged fight, a battle, a war!   The battle raged on for several minutes and after a few creative packing moves (and ryans suitcase) I got that piece of junk packed for the plane!  I am not proud of my behavior that day, but after much perseverance, I won!!  Ha Ha- I showed him… that suitcase won’t mess with me again.

Final score:  Suitcase- 0, Jill -1  (he he)

P.S.

Three things I learned about New Mexico:

1.     They take their hot sauce seriously

2.    They take their margaritas seriously

3.     Seriously?  That’s it!!  What do you expect to learn in 3 days? 

Next stop … NYC!!