Santa Fe Viewpoint

I wonder if there is room for an opposing view on Jerry Hulse’s Santa Fe in the June 3 Travel Section?

My husband and I finally succumbed to the annual hype on Santa Fe and Taos, and last month we spent a week there wondering what all the hoopla was about.

Santa Fe is the Tijuana of New Mexico. The shops are a boring succession of the identical merchandise (jewelry, pottery, and the like), with prices on the same items varying from 20% to 50%. Buyer beware! The “Santa Fe style” wears on one very quickly, and everything is just too precious and self-conscious (when it isn’t busy being pretentious).

The galleries (including that fraudulent area known as Canyon Road) are filled with very little talent demanding prices unheard of anywhere in the West.

But before you think we are entirely peevish about New Mexico, I urge all to go the extra distance to the jewel of a museum in Roswell, and to the Carlsbad Caverns. And if you are physically able, take the Blue Tour, during which you walk down 83 stories (on gently and sometimes steeply slanting ramps). The sights and wonder of it all will knock your socks off. And don’t miss the twilight “Bat Flight.”

BEVERLY HARLOWE

Tarzana