Conference on Creative Tourism

In the first global gathering of its kind, delegates from around the world met in Santa Fe this week to explore the concept of Creative Tourism. The comprehensive program included talks, seminars, and interaction with Santa Fe artists, musicians, filmmakers, photographers, craftspeople, and business experts.

What is creative tourism? The definition developed cooperatively by UNESCO’s Creative Cities is “engaging travelers in a community’s culture through active participation which provides the visitor an authentic experience of a community’s heritage”. The goal is to promote the social, economic, and cultural development of municipalities in both the developed and developing world.

Why did UNESCO choose the city format?

1. Cities harbor the entire range of cultural actors throughout the creative industry chain from the creative act to production and distribution.
2. As breeding grounds for creative clusters, cities have great potential to harness creativity, and connecting cities can mobilize this potential for global impact
3. Cities are small enough to affect local cultural industries but also large enough to serve as gateways to international markets.

Santa Fe holds the distinction of being the only Creative City in the U.S., joining Aswan, Berlin, Bologna, Buenos Aires, Edinburgh, Glasgow, Lyon, Melbourne, Montreal, Popayan, Columbia, and Seville.

I was able to attend the Wednesday session, and in the following days, I will discuss our roundtable on Gastronomy, which attracted delegates from Japan, France, Santiago de Compostela, Barcelona, Bologna, as well as several of us New Mexicans.

In addition, I hope to share with you ideas from a fascinating lunch speaker, Geoffrey Godbey, a specialist on re-positioning of leisure and tourism services for the future.

Stay tuned!

Santa Fe Conference on Creative Tourism

To every avid traveler, there comes a time when home is best. Healing from skin cancer surgeries, I've been a two-month recluse, and I apologize to my readers for my lack of communication. Next week I'll be crawling out of my cave into the light of day--however with a 55 SPF sunblock and a jaunty new Tilley wide brim hat.

The UNESCO Santa Fe International Conference on Creative Tourism will be held September 8-October 2, and I will be on the scene reporting. The program focuses on providing the skills and knowledge necessary for developing creative tourism programs. Attendees will experience practical applications and learn through sessions with some of the world's foremost leaders in the field. Tune in for my take on the proceedings.

Just When It Was Safe to Go Into the Woods...

For your first experience at Geocaching, I suggest you steer clear of timing your trek to coincide with a July mid-afternoon in New Mexico. This cautionary tale is based on sweat, exhaustion, and frustration, all of which could have been avoided with a bit of common sense.

For husband Dick’s recent birthday, our children decided to present their dad with the latest in electronic gadgetry, a Global Positioning System (GPS) unit. After a few auto jaunts with our in-car navigator, we figured we’d give the popular new sport of Geocaching a try.

For those not keeping up with the trends, Geocaching is a seek and find game where participants use a GPS to unearth hidden containers or caches. Locally we have hundreds. A typical cache is a waterproof container, frequently an old Army ammo can, filled with a logbook and “treasure,” usually trinkets or toys. Geocaches are registered on various websites. We downloaded our selected cache’s coordinates from http://www.geocaching.com/.

To make our search easier, we selected to find our cache in the Rio Grande Nature Center, a nearby state park. This year New Mexico Geocachers in cooperation with New Mexico State Parks are celebrating the parks’ 75th Anniversary by placing a cache in each of the 34 state parks. A prize is awarded for cachers completing the entire series by December 31, 2008.

The Rio Grande Nature Center is a serene oasis along the river bosque in Albuquerque. Included on the riverine site are interpretive nature trails, demonstration gardens, a visitors center with numerous exhibits, and a wetland blind overlooking a pond filled with Canada geese, native and migrating waterfowl, a brace of lazy turtles, and in summer a swarm of hummingbirds.

Having worked as a volunteer at the Center, I figured finding this cache would be easy and quick. Experienced cachers would probably have found the exercise easy. We made several mistakes. Not fully understanding the workings of our GPS unit was the first; not taking a supply of water, the second; and walking the trails at noon was the third. We hiked and hiked. Every time we got close to one coordinate, the other was wrong. Finally we stopped and asked a park ranger. He laughed and pointed to the spot where I stood. It was within three feet.

Now we have 1/34th of our list complete. It was fun, but the next time we go Geocaching, we will be sure of our equipment, try to find the place in early morning or evening if in summer, and carry plenty of water.

To round off the day, we drove downtown for lunch at one of the Burq’s top boutique pizza places, Il Vincino. Our shared 12-inch wood-oven-fired Testarosa featured marinara sauce, mozzarella, pepperoni, roasted red peppers, calamata olives, caramelized onions, mushrooms, and fresh oregano, all washed down with big glasses of their in-house brewed root beer.

For a cooling dessert, we walked a couple doors down to Ecco Gelato for a cup of one of their daily 22 flavors. I tried a sample of the strawberry habañero. What a flavor explosion! It starts out smooth and sweet, ending at the back of the palate with a pepper blast. Perhaps the next time I’ll go for the full cup, but that afternoon I settled on fig and orange paired with the honey apricot, an agreeable reward for a day of bushwhacking.

Rio Grande Nature Center, 2901 Candelaria NW, Albuquerque, 87107. Hours: Gate opens, Monday-Sunday, 8 AM to 5 PM; Visitors Center, 10 AM to 5 PM. Admission $3 per vehicle. Leashed dogs allowed only on the path bordered by a fence that extends west from Candelaria NW (guide dogs excepted).

Geocache web site: http://www.geocaching.com/

Il Vicino, 3403 Central Ave. NE, Albuquerque 87106. 505-266-7855. Hours, Sunday-Thursday, 11 AM to 11 PM; Friday and Saturday, 11 AM to midnight.

Ecco Gelato, 3409 Central Ave., Albuquerque 87106. 505-660-4721. Hours, Monday-Thursday, 7 AM to 10 PM; Friday and Saturday, 7 AM to 11 PM; Sunday, 8 AM to 10 PM.

The Mystery of the Hidden Pueblo

Discovering Piedras Marcadas was like finding Machu Picchu in your backyard. I’ve written about Albuquerque’s new Open Space Visitors Center before, but until this past weekend I had no idea they protected treasures like this pueblo as well.

A part of the Petroglyph National Monument, Piedras Marcadas or Marked Stones, was a pueblo occupied between AD 1300 and the mid-1500’s. With three main multi-storied structures and over 1,000 rooms, it is the largest remaining intact pueblo in the middle Rio Grande Valley.

If the pueblo was so large, why haven’t we seen ruins, or why hasn’t it been reconstructed like the pueblo at Coronado State Monument? The answer is part luck and part preservation. In the 1940s and 1950s archaeologists were everywhere in the Rio Grande Valley, digging and hauling artifacts away to museums. At that time Piedras Marcadas was on private land, and the site had only a small home.

By the early 1980s the landowners wanted to develop the land for condominiums. In a forced move, the city purchased the property for open space. Due to the religious connection between the ancient residents and the rich concentrations of petroglyphs on West Mesa, the pueblo was included in the Petroglyph National Monument’s boundaries.

To provide an introduction to the tour, city archaeologist Matt Schmader gave a 45-minute talk on the history of the terrain and the people who inhabited it. We learned paleo-Indians wandered our land as early as 12,000 BP. Before Coronado and his depredations, dozens of pueblos rimmed the Rio Grande.

Our visit was a rare privilege. The location is fenced and locked and open only for special events such as the talk and tour organized by the Visitors Center. As we plowed through a crop of dead weeds, we made our way to the first of three mounds. No foliage grew there. Under a layer of sand, the old adobe walls provide an obstruction to growth. Pot shards, grinding tools, and flint knapped chert covered the ground.

As we walked from area to area, Schmader fielded questions and pointed out exceptional examples of different types of pottery. A frantic killdeer mother scurried this way and that, pretending a broken wing to lure us away from her clutch of four speckled eggs. A metate, abandoned a century ago, rested near a patch of buffalo gourd.

Out of respect for today’s Tiwa people, who are direct descendents of the ancient villagers, new non-invasive methods using electrical current are being used to delineate structures. It is a work in progress. Piedras Marcardas will never be uncovered using the old methods of excavation. It will sleep peacefully under its blanket of sand, safe for further generations.

City of Albuquerque Open Space Visitor Center
6500 Coors Blvd NW
Between Montano Blvd. and Paseo del Norte at the end of Bosque Meadows Rd
Albuquerque, NM
(505) 897-8831
www.cabq.gov/openspace/visitorcenter.html

Dem Dry Dino Bones

Wanna’ feel like a kid again? Hustle over to the New Mexico Museum of Natural History and Science. Greeting you as you enter the lobby, Stan, the Tyrannosaurus Rex, assumes a threatening pose. After your first introduction to ancient bones, start your “walk through time,” by hastening up to the second floor where you begin with “Origins,” an introduction into the beginnings of life on earth. All fossils and artifacts were discovered in New Mexico.

From single-celled organisms to the age of super giants, the Jurassic, it’s an experience in awe and wonder. You progress through the dawn of time when New Mexico actually had a seacoast, to the explosive Age of Volcanos, the evolving Grasslands, the Pleistocene represented by a cave mock-up, and the Ice Age.

In the new Triassic exhibit you view the battle between the crocodile-like Phytosaur and the armored Placerias. If this doesn’t give you the shivers, nothing will. A two-ton piece of rock from the Ghost Ranch near Abiquiq illustrates how pile on pile of fossilized bone can present paleontologists with a merry puzzle.

From the Dawn of the Dinosaurs, the Triassic, you progress into the Age of the Super Giants, the Jurassic. It’s impossible to describe the feeling of puniness standing next to the immense plant-eating Seimosaurus, locked in battle with the meat-eating Saurophaganax (see photo). The big lizard’s name means “earthquake lizard,” and it’s 110 feet long from snout to tip of tail. It weighed about 30 tons.

Your next stop is the Extinction Room which illustrates in sound and light the devastation caused by the huge meteor which is believed to have finished off the big boys in the preceding exhibit.

After completing up your explorations, you can attend a show at the Planetarium or visit the Lockheed Martin Dynatheater presentations of “Dinosaurs Alive!” and “The Living Sea.” Check out the interactive Nature Center, or pick up a souvenir at the Nature Works store. The museum’s M Café is a great place to stop for a snack or a meal. I’d especially recommend their green chile stew.

New Mexico Museum of Natural History and Science, 1801 Mountain Road NW (Old Town), Albuquerque. 505-841-2800. Daily, 9 AM to 5 PM. http://www.nmnaturalhistory.org/.

Zacatecas, Mexico

Deep in the mine, the guide’s flashlight beam illuminated the vein of white quartz streaked with a tracing of pure silver ore. On such a slender thread was Zacatacas founded by Spanish miners in the 16th century.

Today Zacatecas rests like a rose in the desert of what was once Mexico’s northern frontier. And like that rose, its pink canterra stone buildings glow in the clear, clean light. Called “The Silver City” for its origins, today Zacatecas offers travelers a wide variety of experiences from a tour into the only remaining mine to a exhilarating ride on a zip line from the heights of La Bufa hill into the valley.

For the museum lover, even a week’s stay is too short to cover them all. A full day can be spent at the Rafael Colonel with its extraordinary collection of over 12,000 Mexican dance masks. Museo de Guadalupe has one of the country’s finest collections of 18th century religious art, housed in what was originally a Franciscan convent.

A trip into the countryside brings amateur archeologists to La Quemada, a group of prehistoric ruins perched on the rim of a hill. After investigating the Hall of Columns and the Votive Pyramid, an alfresco lunch at a local restaurant is the ticket.

Unusual hotels include the Quinta Real, constructed around the city’s original bull ring, and Meson de Jobito, a rambling assembly of plazas, alleys, and houses centered around an old city neighborhood. Food runs from the traditional gorditas at legendary Dona Julia’s to fine dining at the Hotel Empirio or the new Santa Rita.

Turismo Zacatecas, Av. Hidalgo#403, Centro Historico, Zacatecas, Zac. Phone +52 (492) 922 6751. http://www.tourismozacatecas.gob.mx/



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