A Taos Experience: Part 2

[See the previous blog entry by going to "Blog Posts" and clicking on "Taos: Part 1" (under "New Mexico").]

So, like I started saying in my last entry, Taos is a beautiful small town. Nearly all the buildings - shops, houses and churches - are made from adobe bricks covered with plaster, brown or beigey, with flat roofs, like something I'd expect to see in Israel (not that I would know, having never been there myself!). It's a very artsy place, and it seems to me every second shop was an art gallery or sold crafts of some sort.

And the house we were building was, of course, the same. And in the course of four days, 23 of us university students, a few caravaners and one very on-to-it builder plastered the entire inside of a home for a solo mum and her four or five kids. Such a satisfying feeling to see it completed.

And probably the highlight was when the families who were going to move into that home and another one nearby made us dinner, and told us about their lives. Very humble, and very grateful.

Other highlights were: church in Taos, the bridge over the gorge, the mini hike down a valley in search of hot springs - which turned out to be freezing cold! - and the trip to the pueblo. Taos pueblo is a living community of Native Americans, and has existed there for around 1,200 years. (See the pic on my blog page, props to some random off Google images.) The buildings are made from adobe brick, of course, but unlike other multi-storeyed Taos houses, access to upper storeys is only by outside ladder - there are no inside staircases. There are lots of little shops selling crafts, jewellery and food cooked in their adobe ovens.

In the pueblo itself, they don't allow electrivity or running water - they have to collect it from the stream - and speak English, Spanish or Tiwa, their native dialect. It was awesome to hear people communicating in it, but one thing I felt a little uncomfortable with was the fact that they won't teach their language to "outsiders." (Again, it's interesting to contrast it with the Maori situation in NZ.)

Overall, it had a really nice community feel to it, and I liked how they're making such an effort to preserve their architecture, language, arts and crafts etc.

Here ends my detailed (long - sorry!) run-down of my Taos experience. I got the team to drop me off in a city in New Mexico, and I'm planning on staying here for the next few days. Accommodation-wise though, I'm not so sure if I want to. I'm staying at the only youth hostel I could find on the web, and well, let me just say it makes Nairobi Youth Hostel look like the Ritz. I never thought I was fussy about accommodation (sleeping marae-style on school-room floors in Taos was fine) until I came to this place. It's an old, run-down house which has been converted into a backpackers, and usually that'd be fine by me. But this place lacks that homely feel places like that are supposed to have; the guy at the desk is kinda out-of-it; the dorm is dark and not well-aired; it's messy and there are ants on the floor in the bathroom (Rach, you'd love it!) and there's something weird about the place I can't quite put my finger on.

Maybe I'll move tomorrow. Watch this space.

PS: Kerikerians, I'd love to hear how you are doing - survived the floods OK?