Our first stop on the drive down to Santa Fe was in a small but very wealthy mountain town called Durango. Apparently Johnny Depp had been staying and filming in the town over the past few days, but we didn't see him.

We also stopped at the Echo Ampitheatre, which was a natural rock formation in the cliff where a huge chunk of rock had fell away leaving a natural ampitheatre which sent echos across the land.

We arrived into Santa Fe around 4pm and it was sunny! And warm! And we found a Trader Joes! Traders Joes are the best supermarkets ever, they have all sorts of interesting foods and it's all fresh and they have weird chocolate bar concoctions and lovely wines, and even cider!

We were being hosted by another couch-surfer and, after a rather long drive down some unmade roads, we found her house, built in open land, seemingly miles from any other houses. It was basically in scrub land and she said that cougars wandered freely around. We were sort of pleased to find out that we were staying in an out-house up the drive. It had electricity - just - well enough to power the fridge and kettle and laptop! There was no plumbed toilet, just a hole with some compost, and no heating, but with a paper and wood burning stove.

That night it was absolutely freezing and eerily dark and generally scary. The next morning our host had already left for work, so we headed out for breakfast and a walk around the arty, desert town. There were some really interesting shops and so many little galleries and churches. And it was warm and sunny again, thank god! That afternoon we went to an area of town where there are hundreds of independant galleries and workshops for local artists. From there we found a back-street pizza place - which was actually called Back Street Pizza - for a proper American pizza and root beer. Then back to our eerie out house, which was very dark by then, but we didn't see any cougars.