Santa Fe is for the Tourists (only!)

I recently went to Santa Fe, New Mexico, for a conference. February was really the ideal time to go there, since the heat and I don't get along very well, and a week in the Southwest in any time but winter has about as much appeal to me as slamming my hand in a car door. A few years ago I spent a week driving around Arizona in July, starting and ending in Phoenix, with a trip to the Grand Canyon. The heat was just awful, especially for three guys camping out at night and driving in a small pickup with no air conditioning. We ended up driving forever to get to the Sangre de Cristo mountians north of Santa Fe, just to get some elevation and get out of the desert. The mountains were a revelation, an oasis of green and cool breezes and running streams that almost made me forget the misery and oppressive nature of the desert. Maybe sometime I'll dig through my journals and post my actual entries from that trip.

But February was ideal weather to explore the Southwest a little bit, with warm days in the 50s or 60s and cool nights for sleeping. Santa Fe is at nearly 7000 feet, and thankfully doesn't resemble the strip-mall hell that is Phoenix. In fact, Santa Fe has a charming downtown of adobe buildings with protruding wodden beams, narrow streets and tile roofs. I can't say that I saw much of Santa Fe outside of the downtown, mostly because the conference kept me busy and centered around the hotel facilities.

Santa Fe is an unusual city for me, in that I have seen many cities all over the world, and Santa Fe seems to be the only city that has abandoned its entire downtown and historic district to tourism. In some way it seems like a savvy move- fill the whole area with hotels and art galleries and restaurants and let the out-of-town cash come rolling in. But in other ways it seems almost dishonest- are you really visiting a place if nobody lives there? I mean, I've never been to a city's downtown where there was NOTHING for locals. There are no stores, no offices for workers, no apartments, no condos, no anything for non-tourists. If you want to buy a super-expensive turquoise necklace, no problem, but if you want to buy a half gallon of milk and a loaf of bread, you're SOL. And it's just a strange feeling to walk around someplace at night and realize that every single person who you see walking around or eating in a restaurant is also from out of town. The only locals were the ones working there, and they must live outside of town, where all the real facilities and housing were.

I suppose this brings up a central question of why we travel and what it means to visit a place. Have we really experienced a place if we only go where we are supposed to go? Did I really see Santa Fe- the old buildings and churches and art- or did I miss the other side of it, how the locals lived, what they do for fun, what is life there really like? I almost felt like I was at Disneyland- you see the facades and props and costumed characters, but you know that in the bowels of the castle there's Mickey and Minnie and Goofy with their heads off, the actors smoking cigarettes on their lunch break and watching the clock. Did you really meet Cinderella, or someone dressed up like her? Did I see Santa Fe, or someplace dressed up like Santa Fe?