La Posada to the Castaneda
There’s a statue of Eagles frontman Glenn Frey “standing on the corner in Winslow Arizona,” catty cornered from the La Posada Hotel. The restored Harvey House is as out of place as a flying saucer in the impoverished reservation town. It’s a three hour drive from Prescott so we go there sometimes for dinner at the Turquoise Room, which serves churro lamb, wild game, and other specialities. The last time we went we left the car there and took the train on to Las Vegas, New Mexico, to visit the Castaneda Hotel, the newest Harvey House newly restored there by La Posada owners Allan Affeldt and Tina Mion.
We had to catch the eastbound Amtrak at 5 am for the eight hour trip. There was a dining car but the food wasn’t very good. If we do it again I will take some sandwiches, or pick up something in Gallup when the train stops for a few minutes. There is wide open reservation country with the endless stretches of reservation land, and then the rails snake into higher country, letting off anybody going to Santa Fe at the little stop of Lamy. Then it’s Las Vegas, one of the strangest little towns I’ve ever visited.
To begin with, there is no transportation in Las Vegas. There’s no car rental agency, no Uber or Lyft, and there’s one taxi cab which may or may not show up, and does not operate on Sunday mornings. We had tried to book the Castaneda, beside the tracks, because it was our main interest. There were just a few rooms ready to rent, though, and we had not known there was going to be a Pride parade that weekend. So they put us in the Plaza Hotel, which they bought to supplement the Castanada. We assumed the Plaza was a block away from the Castaneda downtown, but it’s not. It’s a couple of miles away and there was no shuttle.
The desk clerk at the Castaneda offered us a ride and we took it. I never know how much to tip in a situation like that but I figured ten was enough but not effusive praise for a service that should be in place when the guests start arriving. I wondered later how much I should have tipped to get a ride back.
We walked anywhere we wanted to go. There were a couple of places in the surrounding area to which we would have gone if we could have rented a car or even located the mythical taxicab. It’s not just transportation that’s lacking in Las Vegas, there’s not much to do besides drink and eat, and finding good food is pretty much impossible. You can find food that tastes good but as a rule everything has to be low priced to get business, and so the quality isn’t the best. The first day we ate breakfast at the Plaza but it wasn’t very good. We couldn’t find any good quality ice cream in walking distance. We did find one close by cafe that was good. It was the World Treasures Travelers Cafe.
The Plaza Hotel was the one in No Country for Old Men, where Javier Bardem followed Woody Harrelson up the stairs and killed him in his room. Our room was the Cohen Brothers Suite, and it looked out over the town plaza, where on Saturday gay people began to gather, coming from Albuquerque and other places to celebrate Pride in Las Vegas. What I noticed about this event was the closeness of families, and how they supported their gay brothers and cousins and sisters and moms. It didn’t matter. They all turned out and cheered the parade. There were no outsiders.
Later that night we tried a Mexican restaurant we’d been told was good, and it was crowded. We sat at the bar. As appears to be usual in Las Vegas the drinks were good and the food just okay bar food, heavy on the fat and salt. On my right there was a woman who seemed to be having an argument with a couple to her right. The bartender told her to leave them alone or she was out of there. So she switched to me, reaching onto my plate and taking some of the food. That time they did put her out, explaining that she’s not usually like that, and is a professor at the college.
We walked around and saw a lot of houses and old business sites that were in disrepair, abandoned houses, it looked like a town that had been dying for awhile. Except for the Plaza and the Castaneda. We walked back to the Castaneda because we had already figured out we might have to find our own way there with our suitcases if somebody didn’t give us a ride. The restaurant wasn’t open yet but the bar was, hosted by a charming man named Don. I asked him if he was Don Juan and he admitted he is, though I’m not supposed to tell anybody. Even though I knew his back story he pretended to not have any little smoke.
We had called the taxi and gotten a recording. One bit of information on the recording was that there is no service on Sunday mornings, which is why we figured we’d be walking. We were right. The Plaza was jumping with the influx of gay tourists, mostly men, and the concierge looked overwhelmed. I asked him how we would get back to the train station and he said to call the cab. I was sure he already knew there was no service on Sundays so I got the message that he was too busy to care how we got to the station.
So we trekked a couple of miles with suitcases back to the train. We didn’t mind walking all that much, it just felt like they weren’t really ready to do business yet. We would consider going back when the restaurant is open at the Castaneda, and when we can get a room that’s not a two mile walk.
