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The best guide to New Mexico, packed with essentialsCity walks and country drives all across the state
Museums and monuments, pueblos and national parks
Where to shop for Navajo weavings, silver, jewelry, pottery, cowboy boots, and regional art
The great outdoors -- golf, hiking, rafting, skiing
Where to stay and eat, no matter what your budgetMountain and desert resorts, adobe B&Bs, sprawling haciendas, inns, simple motels, and the best campgrounds
Chili, fajitas, steaks, and contemporary Southwestern fare at chic restaurants and colorful cafés
Fresh, thorough, practical -- off and on the beaten pathCosts, hours, descriptions, and tips by the thousands
All reviews based on visits by savvy writer-residents
25 pages of maps -- and dozens of great featuresSmart travel tips
Fodor's Choice
What's Where
Pleasures & Pastimes
Festivals
Complete index
This excerpt, from the
Pleasures and Pastimes section, gives you a taste of what New Mexico has to offer and the sights and scenes that make it a great place to visit.
Dining
In northern New Mexico, babies cut their teeth on fresh flour tortillas and quickly develop a taste for sopaipillas, deep-fried, puff-pastry pillows, drizzled with honey. But it is the chile pepper, whether red or green, that is the heart and soul of northern New Mexican cuisine. More varieties of chiles are grown in New Mexico than anywhere else in the world.
New Mexican restaurants are especially popular and are almost universally inexpensive. Some serve buffalo meat (stews, steaks, and burgers), particularly in southern New Mexico -- "cowboy country."
Outdoor Activities and Sports
Bicycling -- Albuquerque is a biker's paradise, with miles of bike lanes and trails crisscrossing and skirting the city. Not only is Albuquerque's Parks and Recreation Department aware of bikers' needs, but bike riding is heavily promoted as a means of cutting down on traffic congestion and pollution.
Bird-Watching -- The Bosque del Apache National Wildlife Refuge, 90 mi south of Albuquerque, is the winter home of tens of thousands of migrating birds, including one of only two wild flocks of the rare whooping crane.
Canoeing and River Rafting -- You can take it easy or challenge yourself on New Mexico's rivers. The Taos Box, a 17-mi run through the churning rapids of the Rio Grande, is one of America's most exciting rafting experiences.
Fishing -- The San Juan River's high-quality water regulations make for some of the best trout fishing in the country. Six-thousand-acre Heron Lake contains rainbow trout, lake trout, and kokanee salmon.
Golf -- With several dozen courses, the state has a respectable share of turf, and the dry climate makes playing very comfortable. There are excellent public courses in Albuquerque, Angel Fire, Las Vegas, Los Alamos, Ruidoso, Santa Fe, and Taos.
Hiking -- New Mexico's air is clean and crisp, and its ever-changing terrain is aesthetically rewarding as well. Carlsbad Caverns National Park in the southeast has more than 50 mi of scenic hiking trails.
Horse Racing -- Horse racing with pari-mutuel betting is very popular in New Mexico. Two of the more favored of the state's tracks are Downs at Santa Fe, 5 mi south of town, and Downs at Albuquerque, a glass-enclosed facility in the center of the city at the New Mexico State Fairgrounds.
Hot-Air Ballooning -- Albuquerque's Kodak International Balloon Fiesta in early October draws the largest number of spectators (an estimated 1.5 million people) of any sporting event in the state.
Rodeos -- Rodeos are a big draw from early spring through autumn. Besides big events in Santa Fe, Albuquerque, and Gallup, every county in the state has a rodeo competition during its county fair. Major Native American rodeos take place at Stone Lake on the Jicarilla Reservation, on the Mescalero Apache Reservation, at the Inter-Tribal Ceremonial in Gallup, and at the National Indian Rodeo Finals in Albuquerque.
Skiing -- New Mexico contains many world-class downhill ski areas. The Santa Fe Ski Area averages 250 inches of dry-powder snow a year; it accommodates all levels of skiers on more than 40 trails.
Parks and Monuments
New Mexico's outstanding parks and monuments contain outdoor recreational facilities, campgrounds, and historic exhibits. New Mexico's state-park network includes nearly four dozen parks, ranging from high-mountain lakes and pine forests in the north to the Chihuahuan Desert lowlands of the south.
Reservations and Pueblos
The Indian reservations of New Mexico are among the few places left in the United States where traditional Native American culture and skills are retained in largely undiluted form.
The Jicarilla Apaches live on a reservation of three-quarters of a million acres in north-central New Mexico, the capital of which is Dulce.
The Navajo Reservation, home to the largest Native American group in the United States, covers 17.6 million acres in New Mexico, Arizona, and Utah. Navajos are master silversmiths and rug weavers, and their work is available at trading posts scattered throughout the reservation.
New Mexico's Pueblo cultures evolved out of the highly civilized Anasazi culture that built Chaco Canyon. Pueblos dating back centuries are located near Santa Fe, Taos, and Albuquerque; the best time to visit them is during one of their many year-round public dance ceremonies.
Shopping
Santa Fe, Old Mesilla near Las Cruces, Taos, and Old Town in Albuquerque are all filled with one-of-a-kind, locally owned specialty shops; national boutique chain stores have only recently arrived. From leather goods and handwoven shawls to Mexican imports, crafts, household items, local foods, and wonderful bookstores, New Mexico will satisfy.
Antiques -- As New Mexico is the oldest inhabited region of the United States, it can be great fun to browse through its antiques shops and roadside museums. You'll find everything in these shops, from early Mexican typewriters to period saddles, ceramic pots, farm tools, pioneer aviation equipment, and yellowed newspaper clippings about Kit Carson and D. H. Lawrence.
Art -- Santa Fe, with more than 150 galleries, is the arts capital of the Southwest and a leading arts center nationally. Albuquerque and Taos are not far behind. Native American art, Western art, Hispanic art, contemporary art, sculpture, photography, prints, ceramics, jewelry, folk art, junk art.
Crafts -- Hispanic handcrafted furniture and santos command high prices from collectors. Santos are religious carvings and paintings in the form of bultos (three-dimensional carvings) and retablos (holy images painted on wood or tin).
Spices -- Roadside stands sell chile ristras, and shops all over the state carry chile powder and other spices. You'll catch the smell of chile peppers from the road; walk in a store and your eyes may water and your mouth salivate.
Studio Tours
In late September the villages of northern New Mexico come alive. This is a region of artists' colonies, and from the last weekend of September through the first weekend of December the artists and artisans residing in the villages of Galisteo, the Pecos Valley, El Rito, Abiquiú, Dixon, and Madrid take turns hosting studio-tour weekends.
