Strengthening the Ties Tour: Santa Fe and the Great Couch Surf!

Couch surfing started in 2004 with the mission of connecting willing hosts with travelers. From a slow beginning with 45000 members by the end of 2005, it now has 780000 members in 232 territories around the world. It's slogan..."Participate in Creating a Better World, One Couch at a Time"!

We heard about couch surfing from fellow SA traveler, Jonno who'd couch surfed in NYC and loved it. Our friend circle didn't quite extend all the way to New Mexico so we decided we'd try it! So Hannah jumped on the couch surfing site and contacted several people in Santa Fe, New Mexico which was our second stop on our journey! We wanted to spend a full day in Santa Fe so we needed to spend two nights.

Trevor agreed to have us the first night, but had another surfer the second night. Thankfully another couch hoster, Joel agreed to have us the second night!

We drive the 1032 miles (2800km) from st Louis to Santa Fe, New Mexico. We passed through Oklahoma which was fairly uneventful. We drove through Texas which was fine except that I kept looking behind me. We arrived fairly late in the evening and spent a fantastic few hours with Trevor hearing his stories about working in Antarctica and studying polarity theory. That night we had a relaxing sleep on Trevor's couch - our first couch surfer!

We had breakfast with Trevor and he told us of the interesting sites to see in Santa Fe. It is the capital of New Mexico and has a population of about 72,056. The city lies on a plateau and is partially surrounded by mountains that are often spectacularly lit by the rising or setting sun. The terrain of New Mexico is semi arid and similar to the Karoo in South Africa; It appears as if the rock features have been there since time began! It is at an altitude of 7000 feet so it is fairly high! The buildings are all in the Pueblo style which perfectly suit the semi arid environment of New Mexico. Santa Fe also boasts the US oldest building!

Pueblo style building! The oldest house!

Santa Fe is a mecca for artists and we spent a fair portion of the day looking at exquisite art from paintings to moving mobiles. One facet of Santa Fe's art which made an incredible impression on me was the sculpture, in particular, bronze sculpture!
One gallery we visited had an exhibit of sculptures of children playing and the artist had literally captured a moment of time in bronze. The children were not just life like, their expressions of sheer joy were perfectly captured! It was simply incredible!
Maybe the story of Pygmalion was not a myth after all...
We also visited a proper cowboy hat shop. The shop measures the exact dimensions of a customer's head and makes a custom hat out of the best material of all - beaver felt!

The cowboy shop with the antique head measurer!

After spending the day walking through out the town, we met up with Joel and Matt at the local co-op. We bought some food and spent the evening making bread, cooking dinner, drinking wine, and chatting! We had such a great time that we stayed up til 2am. Our planned leaving time was 6am, but we wisely left at 9am!