We started our descent to southern New Mexico on August 4th. Our first stop was Forth Sumner, an "in-the-middle-of-nowhere" town with a rich history. This is the town where famous outlaw Billy the Kid is buried.
But this is also the town where in the 19th century, the Americans built the Bosque Redondo reservation (rather concentration camp) for the Navajo and Apache Indians. The Indians were forced to walk there from their homes (more than 400 miles or 640km) in the mountains during winter - referred to as the "long walk" - anyone who was too weak (elderly, children, sick or pregnant women) were either left behind or shot by the Americans. The indians were forced to become farmers (which was not in their nature, they were hunters) but crops failed miserably... After a few years, the Americans finally realized their mistake and allowed the Indians to return to their homes. Now, I have heard of the "cowboy and indian" wars (I even dressed up as one of them when I was a kid) but I never realized how bad things really were.
We spent most of August 6th in the dark, in Carlsbad Caverns, an amazing cave in the middle of the desert, very famous for its huge population of bats. I have been to many caves before (mostly in France) but I never saw anything like this.
We took the natural entrance down (of course there's also an elevator), passing already an incredible number of beautiful cave formations. But the real treat was the "Big Room", a cave so big that it would easily fit 14 football fields! Everywhere you looked, there were hundreds of stalactites, stalagmites or draperies. See some pictures below but they don't do the caves justice. There's only one way to describe how you feel after more than 6 hours in Carlsbad Caverns: insignificant and small.
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