Travel Long Haul: North America with a Latin heart

Aliens, artists and Indians: Mary Dejevsky has a close encounter with New Mexico

New Mexico car licence plates are unique. They are the only US plates to clarify that the state is in the United States - a necessary precaution, apparently, for the many Americans who do not realise that New Mexico has been part of the Union since 1848 (and a full state since 1912). They are also the only plates whose typically kitschy slogan "land of enchantment" actually undersells the destination.

New Mexico is a travel paradise. It is like and unlike the rest of the United States in the best possible ways. It has spectacular scenery and endless space, but the driving distances are manageable. It has multiple layers of history and uncommon cultural diversity - American Indian, Hispanic, as well as what is called "Anglo".

There is a respect for the past and a concern for the environment that recalls Europe. There are places to stay both for the impetuous traveller seeking atmosphere and for families wanting the reassurance of a reliable motel chain. There is culinary variety. And there is a Latin sense of style and pleasure that makes for distinctive architecture and welcoming manners. You may linger over a meal, and order wine or beer, including on Sundays, without being treated as a budding alcoholic. You can ski in winter; swim, ride and cycle in summer, and nature-watch all year round - birdlife ranges from eagles in the north to humming-birds in the south.

New Mexico is also one of the few states in the American West where you can tour for two weeks (even on spec) or select a couple of centres and branch out from there - and still have plenty left to see next time.

As a northern base, you could choose the city of Santa Fe, where even the BurgerKing is built adobe-style. But you might be advised to settle for Espanola (half-an-hour's drive to the north), or Taos (a half-hour further) as considerably cheaper. But for a special occasion, consider a few nights at La Fonda, Santa Fe's classic hacienda-style coaching inn, which has a reputation throughout North America.

Whether you stay or visit (be warned, parking is not easy), Santa Fe is worth two days at least. With its Governor's Palace history museum, art galleries and Indian market, it is a cultural treasure-house and a visual delight.

For devotees of the painter Georgia O'Keeffe, her landscape and house at Abiquiu, about 50 miles to the north-west, are an easy and dramatically beautiful drive. With advance booking, you may tour her main house and studio. Back in Santa Fe, however, the year-old museum devoted to O'Keeffe's work is a disappointment, housing much juvenilia and little of her mature painting - a deficiency hinted at in the official description: "expanding".

The town of Taos is less twee-ly fashionable now than it was a decade or two ago, having settled back into small-town calm.

The church of St Geronimo is well worth a quick look, and in town you can also find some of the best-quality Indian arts at prices that are not unreasonable. Both here and at the small town of La Mesilla, near Las Cruces in the very south of the state, pre-selection by the galleries may make items more expensive than they would be on the reservation, but they also save you from drowning in the chaotic quantities on offer.

The road from Santa Fe to Taos is lined with reservations, several with their own shops and potteries and many now with round-the-clock casinos - should you fancy your luck. Visit at least one reservation, if only to get a sense of the vast gulf in living standards and perceptions that separates America's first inhabitants from their conquerors.

The Taos pueblo, just north of the town, could be a good place to start. Guidebooks for Americans warn continually not to patronise and not to gawp. Europeans, more used to cultural difference, may need fewer warnings - but you will sense at once, whether the reservation you select is rich (from its new casino) or poor (because it has shunned gambling), that you are in foreign territory.

Another day trip might take in the mountain town of Los Alamos, where the US developed the world's first atomic bomb.

If the associations and the barbed wire and walls surrounding the complex are sinister, the almost Alpine scenery is breathtaking, and there is a newly opened museum.

For southern New Mexico, you might choose as a base the town of Silver City, a developing tourist centre that is still pleasantly unglamourised. The landscape here is flatter, the climate hotter, and Mexico palpably closer. There is still impressive mountain scenery and cave dwellings in the Gila National Forest, and striking geological formations in the City of Rocks State Park. Close by are naturally occurring hot springs where you may bathe in warm minerally water by starlight. As the name Silver City suggests, this region has been mined for precious metals, and the hot, dusty environs contain a clutch of ghost towns from gold- rush days.

From Silver City drive east, through the eerie White Sands missile range where the traffic may be temporarily halted without warning for a launch, you may drive and picnic amid seemingly endless dunes that compose a truly white moonscape. Your destination is the city of Roswell - repeatedly named one of the most liveable cities in the US.

Replete with motels and restaurants, it is celebrated the world over for the closest-ever "encounter of the third kind" - the supposed crash- landing of aliens in 1947. The Roswell Incident has spawned two museums, tours to the "landing site", and an industry of "alien" memorabilia.

You might choose to keep central New Mexico for the end of your trip, as Albuquerque is your most likely point of departure. There are worse places to stay than this mushrooming city which, until last year (when it was overtaken by Las Vegas), was the fastest-growing metropolitan area in the US.

Let me now confess: after five trips to New Mexico in 10 years, I am smitten. Of course, you can encounter bad motels and poor restaurants, as elsewhere. And never underestimate the danger of severe weather: from extreme heat in high summer to snow in winter, and storms and flash-floods at any season.

That said, the scale of the state is such that, in extremis, there will be rescuers and, being New Mexicans, they are likely to be kind.

In 1995 - the latest year for which figures are available - 26,000 Britons visited New Mexico. There should be many more.

Fact File

When to go

Visit in early spring for the cactus flowering; late spring or early autumn for driving and sightseeing; winter for skiing around the Taos area. At Christmas many Indian reservations have illuminations and elaborate ceremonies with traditional dances, tours can be arranged from Albuquerque or Santa Fe.

Getting there

There are no direct flights from the UK to New Mexico. The usual approach is to fly to Dallas on British Airways (from Gatwick, 0345 222111) or American Airlines (from Gatwick or Manchester, 0345 789789) and then on to Albuquerque. Through discount agents such as Bon Voyage (01703 330332) you can fly on American for pounds 487 return. Other US airlines offer good- value connections through alternative gateways

Accommodation

All standard US motel chains are represented in the state. For a double room (two double beds, all facilities) you can expect to pay $50-90 a night. Some include Continental breakfast. Small motels usually charge about $30-50 per night for a double room. One-offs: La Fonda, Santa Fe (00 1 505 982 5511) $200 a night, plus; Cities of Gold Hotel (Indian owned, on reservation) at Pojoaque near Espanola around $85 a night

Recommended reading

New Mexico: Off the Beaten Path, by Todd Staats, Voyager, Pequot Press, 1994; From Santa Fe to O'Keeffe Country, by Rhoda Barkan and Peter Sinclaire, Ocean Tree Books (505-983-1412)

The New Mexico state website is