Never Cross with Las Cruces

We have come to a part of America which is very, very different. I don’t suppose I really understood why New Mexico was called New Mexico. It is, in fact, Mexico - but it belongs to the USA. It is utterly bi-lingual, it cooks Mexican fare, sells Mexican wares, and it is drenched in its very own Mexican and Spanish history.

Hence, the name Las Cruces is Spanish for The Crosses.

Our Las Cruces hotel has a Spanish language name and contains an astonishing collection of Mexican crosses and sells Mexican ethnographica. It is Hotel Encanto de Las Cruces. It means enchanting hotel and, oh, my, it truly is that.

The hotel is very grand. Its foyer has a medieval feel with vast, high-ceiling, dark polished woods and terra cotta tiled floor. Off this runs the gift shop, bar and cafe as well as reception. And everywhere, on every floor, it is decorated with

heavy antique pieces - very classy.

Our room has its television inside a handsome old tallboy. The bedheads are tall and gracious. Oh, but for us, it is the view from our long and lovely 7th floor room. We chose the mountain view which looks upon the Organ Mountains because they are of special significance to Bruce who did an important part of his growing up here.

p> He was a Marine brat and while his Colonel father was assigned to White Sands Missile Range, he lived there just the other side of the Organ Mountains. He went to school there, explored the desert and the mountains and nourished

his innate love for nature and geology. He has always wanted to return to touch base with those influential roots and to show me this wonderful place of which he speaks.

Here we are.

Looking out on those mountains.

And yes, the Organ Mountains have a fluted form which makes one think of pipe organs.

We look at them in the light of dawn as the sun rises behind them.

We look at them etched bright in the sunlit day. We look at them at sunset, watching for the last red light of sunshine and the soft fades of pink.

We also drive around them to visit the White Sands Missile Range and, oh glorious breathtaking swoon, White Sands themselves.

But first, there is a Border Patrol checkpoint to confront. Big drive-through arch with office. Guards with

guns. Didn't have those when I was a lad, says Bruce. I am immediately apprehensive. Is there some special permit we are supposed to have? We drive in and present our passports. I hold my breath.

Have a nice day, says the border guard.

White Sands is one of the wonders of the USA. Of the world. Out here in the vast, flat Chihuahua Desert, it is the product of hundreds of years of the breakdown of gypsum. It is gypsum sand. That is why it is as white as white as white. That is why it is soft and powdery, finer than beach sand. And it is far, far, far from the sea.

It lies in a vast plain hemmed by magnificent mountains - a plain on

which American defence has been testing its missiles for decades. It names its facility in honour of White Sands but does not encroach on its land. White Sands is deemed an American National Monument. The National Parks people look after it. They have people out there with snowploughs, clearing the ever-moving sands off the roads so that people may drive through and admire the pristine whiteness of it

all. They maintain lots and lots of long-drop toilets out there, They keep signage warning people that hiking in the sands can be dangerous. People can easily lose their bearings and get lost. People must, must, must take water.

We don’t. We just go for a shortish walk up and over the dunes. We see in the distance a woman tobogganing down a dune. I go barefooted, adoring the sensation of that super-dry powdery sand. It is softer than sand I know and yet firmer. It sticks to the skin. It does not squeak. It is

smoooooth.

The vistas are awe-inspiring. So clean and white and pure and perfect.

In the core of the dunes, few things grow. On the perimeter dunes there is beautiful exotic vegetation - principally yuccas which are a hardy grass tree like the Australian yakka but which produces long, fine vertical blossom boughs. The blossoms are white when in bloom.

They are seeding now, pods of bright black seeds. They root very deeply into the sand and help to keep the dunes stable. Of course, being sand dunes, they are moving all the time.

All these facts roll through our heads as we stand and gaze and immerse ourselves in the white wonderment of it all. Those magnificent mountains on the horizon add to the

sense of splendid incongruity. White Sands is like many of the world’s great marvels. Nothing really prepares one for it.

One is just so awfully glad one is here.

We drag ourselves away, pausing at the National Parks Information

Center to watch a short video on the history of White Sands. Surprisingly, it is not the oldest of natural phenomena.

Love,of course is. Bruce confides that among the memories stirred up by this return to his old stamping ground is that of his first kiss. Thirteen years old. Her name was Bonnie.

We drive back across the vast Chihuahua Desert looking at all the posts and poles and wires which clearly measure and communicate and play assorted mysterious roles in the business of missile testing. There’s a small missile station a way off the road. Bruce recalls hearing the roar of the rocket engines they were testing. It was an exotic place to live, he recalls.

We’re driving into the White Sands Missile Base, hoping that perhaps we can go inside and Bruce can show me the house in which he and his family used to live.

It is a long shot since security there is heavy. They have guards and a guard house and car scrutiny etc etc. We parked in a public spot away from the security gates and approached the Registration Office on foot.

An African American guy is manning the high security Registration Office. He is very friendly. He has lots of gold teeth and is wearing a cap with Jesus embroidered on the beak and Man of Faith on the front. He is madly enthusiastic about Bruce’s childhood memories but doubts he can get us clearance. We hand over passports. Bruce answers official questions. We are told to sit and wait. When the verdict comes back,

it is negative. Had Bruce been a veteran, it would have been different. But he is an expat.

It was a long time ago. Sorry.

However, while we are not permitted on the base itself, we are allowed in to visit the Missile Museum.

And so it comes to pass that we find ourselves

wandering amid a forest of massive missiles. They are perched and mounted in out there in the landscape, great big deadly old things. A history of warfare and defence technology. Many look very primitive now. Bruce’s father was there working on the Hawk missile. That’s the one. And, oh, there is a bomb casing like the one used to bomb Nagasaki. This is where the payload went.

Inside the museum is an honour wall of all the top scientists who worked on missile projects at White Sands over the years. Not many women. A few. The museum is a series of smallish rooms with specialist themes. It is much more engrossing than I expected.

Missiles, bombs, research teams, code

breakers, archival images…a lot about the Bataan Death March which is regularly re-enacted in honour of those who suffered and died.

There's a model of the McDonnell Ranch House where the first atomic bomb, similar to the Fat Man dropped on Nagasaki, was first assembled in perilously primitive conditions. The

lethal secrecy of it all fires my imagination. I am fascinated. I had never thought about scientists holed up in a desert farmhouse juggling with an orange-sized ball of plutonium.

And one room of the most

emotionally gruelling and utterly arresting art. Montana man Benjamin Steele who was taken on the notorious hell ships and was for three and a half years a Japanese POW.

Of all the records and accounts of POW endurance, these paintings speak to me most vividly and painfully. I am glued to the walls in a

state of heartbreak. Bruce must come hunting for me.

We agree that this museum which, in many ways is a bit quaint, is utterly worth the visit. Outside, we take photos of the spectacular mountain backdrop and Bruce allows himself a voyage into boyhood nostalgia with tales of school food, school bus trips, catching lizards, how much his dad loved the desert and, sadly, how his poor mum from lush North Georgia, thought she had been dropped into a desert hellhole when they were stationed here. Oh, not to mention stories of his rebellious teenage sister causing family scandal by going out without

permission with an enlisted man on a motorcycle to White Sands. This place was a special and beloved capsule in Bruce’s past and the memories pour forth. We are glad we came, albeit sad we could not go on the base. Oh well. Much has changed there. It was 55 years ago, after all.

Las Cruces has more to offer. It is a marvellous city, albeit sprawled across the basin between the mountains with no real sense of a CBD. This would seem so of many of these desert cities which tend to lean away from high rises. With help from Siri Google, we find our way around, albeit the things we need most are directly across the road from our hotel. It’s a really elegant and comprehensive shopping mall

wherein I manage to pick up a couple of necessities for us both and where I can get a needed maintenance job on my toe nails. I get little black and silver palm trees on my green base.

I air these gorgeous nails around the hotel pool which is nothing less than a great luxury old school oasis with Riviera-style high walls and fountains, palm trees hemmed by flowering lantana and butterflies, oh, butterflies. We have this piece of paradise to ourselves. Huge pool towels and comfortable sun chairs between the palms while I do my little aqua routine which is scant calorific offset to the margaritas and Mexican food which I’m shamelessly enjoying.

Talking of which, Bruce, in his quest to bliss me out with Mexican cuisine, sources up a very authentic little off-the-beaten-track family restaurant called Habanero’s Fresh Mex which has scored good reviews online and in the local papers. It is quite nondescript and one enters from a carpark off the main road. The decor is absolutely basic - plastic table cloths, kitchen chairs, cheap ethnic art - but the place has the worn and

scrubbed look of the real thing. Mum and dad work in the kitchen and the daughter takes orders through a counter window beneath the hand-painted menu which covers an entire wall. No wine here, let alone margaritas. We have a Mexican beer - and chicken mole with beans, rice and tortilla and it is absolutely fabulous. Bruce is relieved. Sa loves Mexican.

Mesilla has been waiting for us. Like Albuquerque, it is an old mission-style square containing rustic, characterful shopfronts with classic New Mexico stores selling turquoise jewellery and ponchos.

These differ, however, in touting pecans. Everyone is selling pecans. Not surprising after

all the pecan orchards we have been seeing along the roads. Here are the nuts, fresh and gorgeous. I sample the many and varied ways they prepare them in my chosen shop and then buy enough pecans to last us the rest of the trip and then some. I mean, pecans are a major luxury. One can’t pass them by cheap and fresh at source. I buy them with chili treatment, cinnamon, butter, lavender brittle, salted and plain.

Bruce’s jaw drops - just long enough to fill his mouth with pecans.

We are in the market for a light late lunch and have walked Historic Mesilla looking for a cafe. But cafes are not old Mexico. There is none, although the shops sell pinion coffee beans. We venture in to a restaurant which seems to be the only place open.

And, suddenly, we are in another world. Grand, elegant, gracious, glamorous, affluent old New Mexico.

There’s a glittering, shimmering, crystal shining colonial bar and a series of sumptuous lounge rooms with antique sofas and lavish art. A large covered courtyard with huge ferns and ficus and a massive fountain playing in the middle is the dining area of the day. A tiny, smokey-voiced shrew of a uniformed waitress attends us and takes our order for a light lunch - Posole soup and salad. It comes with lime wedges, chopped onion and dried oregano. Add it to your taste, she orders. That soup is a voyage to heaven. I do another swoon. The waitress tells me some of

the history of the place which includes what she calls living ghosts. I am directed to a small, ornate private dining room where I am likely to meet one. I go in and read all about it but don’t meet the ghost.

We leave Las Cruces the next morning after a last glorious view of the dawn light on the Organ Mountains and a last stolen swim in the heavenly pool.

Bruce has had a recherche du temps perdu and I have had a voyage of discovery.

Mission accomplished.