Posted from The Citrus Report
After a great experience in Marfa, we drove into the sun towards the final fringes of Texas to El Paso. A city that’s just a short hop to the Mexican border, El Paso sits next to Juarez, Mexico, a town notorious for its high rate of violence, cartels and crime. Someone in the car mentioned how the city of Juarez had three times the amount of crime committed in the most murderous city of the States, and that women disappear constantly, often with no hope of ever being found. On a less somber note, Juarez is the only city outside of the U.S. to have a monument dedicated to Abraham Lincoln.
A quick drive through downtown in the early evening yielded a deserted neighborhood that echoed San Francisco’s Mission District at four in the morning. The last time he came here, Jason stumbled upon a thriving community bustling with an explosion of food trucks and vendors. Instead, we left this sleepy part of town and drove over to Chico’s Tacos, a Mexican fast food restaurant that looked dangerously delicious and heart-clogging at the same time. We gorged on a greasy but delicious meal before leaving for the next state. Passing through a city at night feels like the fleeting memories of a dream I can’t quite remember when I wake up– flashes of landscapes and thoughts come and go but I can’t seem to fully grasp the entirety of the picture.
We continued into the darkness towards New Mexico, finally hitting the border around 10 p.m. The landscape in New Mexico is supposed to be one of the most scenic drives of our trip, but the night only allowed for slivers of a divided road, guided by the headlamps that bore down on it.
The next morning we woke up in Albuquerque, home of my now-favorite food, a stuffed sopaisilla. Stufy’s only exists in Albuquerque, and creates fine inventions such as the Stufy #7, a fluffy fried pastry dough stuffed (hence the name) with carne adovada, home fried potatoes, cheese and lettuce. We then made our way towards Santa Fe via the Torquoise Trail and stumbled upon a self-proclaimed ghost town called Madrid. A tiny strip of a community halfway to our destination, Madrid is a quirky town with bedazzled rural storefronts that looks like a puzzle pieced together with a mishmash of stray leftovers. It was fun strolling through this town and speaking with its eclectic members; one woman was on her way to London for vacation and, upon hearing my accent, asked me to give a few suggestions. I politely pointed out where I was from before scooting out of her thrift store.
Santa Fe felt like a smaller and quieter version of Albuquerque, with similar street names and the same pueblo-influenced architecture that’s native to New Mexico. Being my first time in New Mexico, I was awed and inspired by the intense, picturesque sunsets that saturated the sky with fiery flames of clouds licking the edges of my periphery.
I had an interest in seeing Los Alamos, as I had come across a great photo book on the town by William Eggleston that painted a beautiful impression of everyday vernacular life of the 1960’s and 70’s. So from Santa Fe, we took a detour to Los Alamos, 40 miles northwest of where we were. The drive there was magnificent, with canyons of mesas and plateaus jutting from both sides. When we got there, we realized that most of period architecture and life was gone, impossible to find. We started for Albuquerque and at this point only had one thing in mind: Stufy’s #7, with an extra side of fries.
- Arnold Coludy
