Page 31 - Taste_and_Travel_International

PHOENIX DESTINATIONS USA

Phoenix

WHERE ON EARTH

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S TWILIGHT DEEPENS INTO DUSK, I FOLLOW
the Phoenicians into the desert. Music in the distance
beckons us and thousands of tiny, twinkling lights
illuminate a ghostly panorama of saguaro and beehive
cactus, silver, jumping and teddy bear cholla, the lights
a welcoming guide through the desert trails. As we
A drift through the arid garden, taking in the fresh, cool
evening air, I come upon a brass quartet behind a giant saguaro. A flamenco
singer tries valiantly to keep the desert’s fading heat alive. A Mariachi band
serenades the surrounding silence. I’m at Las Noches de Las Luminarias, an
annual year-end festival at the 140-acre Desert Botanical Garden in Papago
Park, an experience unlike any I’ve had in an urban setting.
The Valley of the Sun is a nickname created for Phoenix in the 1930s to
boost tourism. Pumpkinville was among the options considered as
pumpkins have long been a cash crop here — the first challenge to my
perception that nothing grows in the desert except cactus. Valley of the Sun
is indeed a fitting name for a city in a valley (the Salt River Valley)
surrounded by mountains that gets more than 325 days of sunshine each
year, more than San Diego or Miami Beach. As far as what else grows here
besides cactus and pumpkins — I was about to find out.

JANUARY–MARCH 20185 TASTE;5TRAVEL INTERNATIONAL 29