En route to the historic town of Santa Fe, the state capital of New Mexico, I had passed through Albuquerque a few times but never had time to check out the state’s largest city.
That was about to change. When I told people that I was finally going there as the destination, just about everyone said, “Lucky you. That is where ‘Breaking Bad’ was filmed.”
I had heard the phrase but did not know what it was. So I checked it out on the Internet. It was a TV crime drama. No big deal. They had to shoot it somewhere.
But when I was learned that there were no good restaurants in the downtown area and lunch would have to be catered at a business meeting, my concerns began to rise.
The Boeing 737 was now on its final approach into Albuquerque. As it descended beneath the cloud layer that was covering the areas near the city, a fascinating vista opened up. The landscape showed a rugged emptiness dotted with mountains, something that could have come straight out of a western. The one that came to mind was Mackenna’s Gold, which I had seen decades ago in Karachi. In that film, the main star was not Gregory Peck or Omar Sharif but the high desert, mountainous country.
By the time I got into a cab and settled in to check my emails, I was already in the downtown area. It looked deserted, sparse, and strangely quiet, as if something was imminent. The air was still. Nothing was moving.
I had experienced this type of emptiness before, in a movie theatre, where I felt like was walking the streets of a small town in Kansas with Philip Seymour Hoffman. The streets in that town where something had happened in Cold Blood were also empty, quiet and still.
The next day, I was in a high-rise building for my meetings. The view from the 11th floor was awesome. When I left the building later in the day, I encountered an eerie silence. A few incoming cars with their headlights on were coming toward me, silhouetted by the setting sun.
I had experienced this type of emptiness before, in a movie theatre, where I felt like I was walking the streets of a small town in Kansas with Philip Seymour Hoffman. The streets in that town where something had happened in ‘Cold Blood’ were also empty, quiet and still
I was anxious to learn the cultural history of Albuquerque and asked around. I was advised to watch the Breaking Bad series, but was warned that the first couple of episodes might be hard to take. It would be found on Netflix streaming. I was also advised to read “Blood and Thunder.” That too I was told had some difficult scenes. I have yet to do either.
The next day a person took me to a window and gave me an aerial tour, pointing out the places where Breaking Bad had been filmed which I had figured out by now was the city’s claim to fame. This included a curved bridge that spanned the Santa Fe railroad tracks.
Not too far away was a church, aptly located in case the sinners were looking for redemption through repentance.
I learned that many films had been shot in the city, courtesy of an economic incentive program launched by a former governor.
I also heard about a town called Rawson and a place in Nevada near the border called Area 51. Both were associated with the sightings of UFOs containing extra-terrestrials. So I ended up seeing the movie Interstellar at an IMAX theatre the following Sunday.
In Albuquerque, even getting back to the airport was an adventure. It was not the kind of town where you could hail a cab from the street. You had to ping uber via your smart phone, which my associate did very quickly. The car showed up on the dot. This was going to be my first shared ride. The tension dissipated when I found out that the driver was a woman with a smile. She had moved to the city a few years ago from Montana, famous for its cowboys and rodeos.
Since there was more than an hour before my flight, I asked the woman from Montana to give us a brief city tour. She drove us to Nob Hill, an eclectic shopping and eating area just across the University of New Mexico. This Nob Hill was totally unlike the Nob Hill in San Francisco, which is a posh residential area on top of a significant hill. She also showed me the gateway to iconic Route 66, which was appropriately lit up by neon lights.
Then we began to head to the airport. I asked the driver what there was to see in Montana. I knew the Yellowstone National Park touched one corner of the state but not much else. That really got her started. After all, it was her hometown state. She gave me enough tips to last a lifetime of visits.
As we were neared the airport, I pointed out to her that a black helicopter had been following the same route as us. It was noisy and I wondered what it was up to.
She said it was going to land at an airbase nearby. I had seen two C-130’s lifting off as we were coming in to land: dark, heavy, lumbering beasts with four propellers, an ancient design that had stood the test of time. It had a starring role in the movie ‘Black Hawk Down’. And it was the aircraft in which General Zia and several other Pakistani generals had lost their lives somewhere near Bahawalpur.
The driver said the airbase was close to the commercial airport but the base had its own runway. We did not see it land.
We arrived at the airport on time and went past an empty desk for New Mexico Airlines. I had spotted two propeller planes on the runway with New Mexico Airlines written on the fuselage when I had landed and wondered whether they were props in a movie. Later, I found out that the airline just flew them within the state. But the planes looked like they would give you a great ride. Unfortunately, the airline’s list of suspended destinations exceeded the list of active destinations. Perhaps most people just got on the freeway and pressed on the gas.
As the Boeing 737 lifted off the runway, I felt a tug in my stomach. The city had just begun to reveal its secrets to me. I would have to come back, drive around and uncover the mysteries. There was definitely more to it than what one would see in that TV series. Indeed, I came back the following year, but this time the destination was Santa Fe and the Gorge over the Rio Grande. That deserves a whole story to itself.
The writer has visited 35 countries on six continents. He can be reached at [email protected]
Published in Daily Times, October 17th 2017.