From Albuquerque to Andalucia August 31, 2009

Though you wouldn’t know it from my recent posts, I’ve been working the past week from the beautiful home of my beautiful sister Tami Brunk, located near the Rio Grande in Albuquerque’s surprisingly green and vibrant South Valley. Tami has been sharing with me some of the lesser-known attractions of Albuquerque’s south side, such as the lush cottonwood forest along the river called Paseo del Bosque.  We paid a visit to the Pupuseria y Restaurante Salvadoreño for some delicious pupusas – there’s a whole savory range from green chile to grilled fish to Mayan flower pupusas – and arrived in time to catch a performance from a local jarocho group (no, jarocho is not Salvadoran, it’s Veracruzan, but it’s a wonderful complement to the pupusas!)

A Veracruz-style jarocho band livens up Albuquerque's only Salvadoran pupuseria.

The best part of my stay, besides spending time with Tami, has been learning more about the organization she’s been working with as its organizational and developmental director. La Plazita Institute, under the guidance of visionary leader Albino Garcia, has literally helped make the South Valley bloom, on many levels. The organization has a whole network of projects ranging from an urban organic farm to community outreach programs for gang-involved youth.

This week, I’ll be heading west to Acoma Pueblo, where I’ll be seeing the Sky City Cultural Center and a whole host of cultural and natural attractions. But first, I want to share with you a piece that just came out in The Buzz Magazines of Houston, a group of lifestyle magazines that has hired me as their travel editor. It’s a monthly column featuring the travels of readers in The Buzz circulation areas, but for my introductory column, I wrote about my own travels to two of my favorite places: Albuquerque and Andalucia.

Here’s the piece, From Albuquerque to Andalucia.