New Mexico is not Texas (ok, you knew it - I was not sure !)

It s my first real day in NM. Yesterday was to much of administrative, papers, banking, French stuff managing, etc to be really fun.

But today I had a bit more freedom of mind, and a few things to do that were less stressing, and I headed with joy towards Albuquerque late in the morning.

And you know what ? I now have my confirmed answer. 

New Mexico is not Texas.... 

And texans are really not nice people, that s all.

Because here, I find just the easy welcome and the nice interest I have generally encountered in the Us. Speaking with people while paying for my kettle at Sears or looking for my dogs tie out at Petmart was easy... and fun. People help, people listen, people enquire about my strange accent ( French, obviously, but also English, for I have worked in London briefly, plus a hint of total invention if language when I am at a loss of known words ... Here people smile and helps, when in Texas I had the uneasy feeling they were at best not interested, at worst really hostile )

It s strange to see how a land, a culture, a history can forge different way to behave in society, even in places you could think similar superficially.

Texan can probably compare with Parisians for their bad behavior with strangers 

I am so ashamed sometimes if the lack of education and of niceness (does that word exist ?) of my fellow people. Can you imagine that for years there has been a video on YouTube of Parisians making fun of tourists by sending them to the opposite direction of the place they were asking for, and that is has actually become a real local sport to behave this way ?! Just the pleasure to be awful and lose people by saying lies

. I just don t see the fun in that, but if you happen to go to Paris, just beware. Parisians are definitively the French Texans...

Here I find people relaxed, easy going, and the city is really clean (at least where I have been during this day where I have stopped in 4 or 5 different places - but I am still just on the top of things, it will take time till I get "under the skin" and see the different sides of the city)

I love this state, and the art everywhere, and the blue sky, and the mountain all around Albuquerque. 

Can t wait to take sometimes now in the area to draw the landscape,the petroglyphs , the trees etc...

I will just be careful with one thing - one of my very , very strong defect

My total lack of orientation skill.

I am as good at orientation as.. Well, probably an oyster. See the idea ? 

I have just no sense of where the north the south ... Or simply my truck are.

And to tell the whole truth about this afternoon, I have spent about an hour ... on the parking lot of the large mall where I stopped to buy my kettle. I had lost Yeti... And myself as well.

I remembered getting in through Macys...probably. But I have been obliged to go through all the exits one after another, and to walk the whole damn parking lot to find my poor monstrous truck again (actually, there are MANY white Silverado in New Mexico and I have thought more than once I had found my beast before realizing it was just a twin. A luck I have my Sylvie Manso Artist Tour stickers on both sides of my truck, or I would probably halve tried to open all the Silverados of the parking during my desperate quest)

I was about it give up and ask (ah mon Dieu la honte- the shame !) the security car to take me for a ride in the whole parking lot to find my lost Yeti (would they have accelepted ? Not sure) 

When with a shout if victory I finally found my truck, peacefully waiting in a place I simply had absolutely no memory of. I probably was lost in my thinking at my arrival, for I generally try to get at least one or two helps around to find my way back... This time I think I have entered the parking, parked the truck and got into the mall so deeply plunged in my best thoughts that I have simply not looked around once.

So I am proud to say tonight that I am probably today the best Albuquerquian Guide you can now find for the Albuquerque Mall Parking, and that I am considering the idea of setting a Visitors Touristic Tour soon - I can tell you everything about the half level between the two levels of Macys, the wall near the Sears, and the many and not enough admired trashcans if the whole parking lot. I know every feet of the lot...

Please book your tour with my Personal messaging system , on the right of this post...

And by the way, this shows one thing : you can have the orientation skills of an oyster,and stile enjoy to travel everywhere in the world !

And It s sometime the best thing you can do : get lost... 

I have spent hours like that in Bangkok, New York, or even Paris, discovering places I would never have dreamed of if I had stick to the "direct road". When I am really tired of wakplipkingnwithoutnthe slightest idea of where I am , I ask around for the "metro" or hail a "tuk tuk" (ok, more in Bangkok than in New York for that option) and head back to the hotel with no idea of where I am, but hundreds of images and drawings and encounters ... Freedom 

I just know I am absolutely unable to go for a ride alone in the forest, or for a treck in the desert on my own (with mountains at least in France I could manage because they are paths, and I am more or less able to distinguish up and down!)

 Would probably end up in Alaska thinking I was about to find California if you let me manage an excursion to the west on my own (I had good predecessors on that - are n t native still improperly called Indian just because c. Collomb was slightly mistaken by... well, just a continent actually. He thought he had discovered the other face of India when he got to the east coast.

 Christophe Collomb probably had the same oyster skills I have : and it did not did not stop  him from making a good career as a traveller too !

Ouf, i am back home, and my truck sleeps happily near my two dogs, and my increasingly redder cat , thanks to his happy naps on the red earth here.

We enjoy the peace...