A tense couple of hours waiting for the estimate and another few for the repair meant five hours in a McDonalds. In the end all four of our fan belts had to be replaced and amounted to a desperate traveler mark up of $250. After all of that the van was still screeching, but this time in a furious effort to get the hell out of Farmington.
Not only were Farmingtons unhelpful, they seemed perpetually furious, at everything, but mostly at being stuck in Farmington. There was aggressive driving, angry honking and a marital screaming volley in the Sear's parking lot.
Right outside of town was, for several reasons, a world away and made for a fantastic afternoon.
The term "Aztec Ruins" is actually a misnomer as it contains the cultural remnants of not Aztecs, but ancestral Pueblo people who resided at the site from approximately 1110 A.D. to the late 1200's before mysteriously vanishing. Many theories have been proposed but why they left and where they went remains unknown.
The ruins are surprisingly accessible. The tour is self guided and permits visitors to walk through many of the rooms that once made up the community. Maybe we should use another word. Maybe open or available, for it wasn't so accessible. Based on the doorways I suspect the Puebloans were 3 feet tall. We had to literally crawl at points.
It was common practice for the ancestral Pueblo people to burn down their spiritual centers (called "Kivas") upon moving. The Kiva we toured was therefore a reconstruction.
The many bright green lizards crawling all around were another highlight. Actually getting one on camera was, even ignoring our dysfunctional camera, impossible.
Once we finished our tour we immediately left New Mexico and crossed back into CO.
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