New Mexico - Part 2

From A:

One of the New Mexico tours I attended was to Acoma Pueblo, also known as "Sky City."  This Native American pueblo community is built on a 367-foot tall mesa and is one of the oldest continuously inhabited communities in the United States.  Our tour guide still lives at the pueblo, which has no running water or electricity.

Although the structures look much like they always have, several aspects of everyday life have been modernized, such as hauling up water in the back of pickup trucks, having porta-potties, and owning generators.  As our guide told us, the generators are not used often due to the noise level, but you can usually hear them on Super Bowl Sunday or when The Bachelor is on television.

The views from the top of the mesa were breathtaking.

An interesting fact we learned about the Acoma people is that the women own the homes and the men run the government.  Each home is passed down to the youngest daughter in a family.  Since she will presumably live the longest, she is responsible for taking care of the home and her family, then passing the home on to her youngest daughter.  If a family doesn't have a youngest daughter, the home is given to the youngest son who is then expected to pass it on to his youngest daughter.

After our pueblo tour, we drove to another nearby mesa to have one last view of the area.

Coming up in New Mexico - Part 3:
A journey along the "turquoise trail" and a visit to Santa Fe.