We returned to New Mexico to the Corps of Engineers park at Abiquiu Lake ( pronounced Ab-a-que. I don’t know why) which is located between Espanola and Chama.
Near the lake is the small old Spanish town of Abiquiu. It was built in the Spanish style with a plaza in the center of town. Most of the buildings around the plaza are not in good shape. The plaza is just dirt and people drive all over it but on one side is a beautiful, well kept church.
We don’t know when the church was built but guessed around the late 1800s. Around the state we have seen ruins of churches built just like this one that were built in the early 1600s.
A few miles north of Abiquiu Lake is a small sign by a dirt road that says Monastery. We could not resist. This is our kind of road. The road is a mostly one lane dirt road that runs along the Chama River and heads out into the middle of nowhere. This is the kind of country that most visitors and a lot of residents of New Mexico never see and don’t even know exists.
At the end of this 13 mile long road we found
This is the Christ in the Desert Monastery. It would be hard to imagine a more quiet and beautiful setting . This church and a gift shop are open to the public. It has 30 plus monks from 13 different countries. They grow most of their own food, generate their own electricity and pump their own water. The one man we saw there had on a long brown robe, just as you would imagine. To make some money, they have a brewery (sounds like my kind of people) and they grow their own hops so if you see some beer from the Abbey Beverage Company, give it a try.
We moved to another Corps of Engineers park named Cochiti Lake. The lake is several miles southwest of Santa Fe and is where we usually stay when visiting the city.
On to Santa Fe in my next post.
