Sky City - Acoma Pueblo

This weekend we went and toured the Sky City - a pueblo of the Acoma Indian tribe about an hour west of Albuquerque. This pueblo sits on top of a 350+ ft mesa, and the residents do not have any running water or constant electricity (although some make use of generators). It was really interesting learning about the history and traditions of the people. For instance, this adobe church dates to the 17th century. The Spanish forced the people to bring in multiple large and intricately carved wooden beams to support the roof. The beams were not allowed to touch the ground - and if they did, the people were forced to go back and carve new ones. There were paintings inside the church dating to 1640 that were exposed to the open air. According to our tour guide, the arid climate alone is sufficient to preserve the artwork.


These ladders lead up to the entrance of one of the kivas (you enter through the roof) where they practice religious ceremonies they hold sacred.


Here's Tanja from on top of the mesa overlooking some of the rock formations surrounding Sky City. I guess the houses here may lack in basic utilities, but they make up for it with the view.


One of the main reasons we were there was to shop for some Acoma pottery. It is beautifully hand done and some of the pieces are sold for thousands of dollars. Tanja and I both like it and figure a vase or a bowl would be a great souvenir for our time here and would look nice on our new furniture back in Maryland. Sadly, we didn't find much we really liked in our price range at Sky City (the tour stopped every few steps at vendor locations). The one vase we did like in our price range was already sold when we went back with our shopping escort (non-Tribal members have to be escorted everywhere in the pueblo). Oh well, live and learn. Hopefully we will find something we like and can afford next weekend.

We had taken a bus to the top of the mesa to start the tour, but we took advantage of the opportunity to hike back down. These steps were really steep! There are actually tribal races that have the mesa as a leg of the race.




Yet another successful outing!