Taos Link - Link to businesses in Taos

The late Alfred Hobbs had circumnavigated the earth seven times, scaled Mount Kilimanjaro, and survived typhoons in the Southern Oceans – he was irrepressible, roaming the world to learn its secrets, but Niels Hobbs' favourite story of all, was of his mother and father's greatest adventure - in the taxi. Weeks after they were married in 1955, Alfred and Jakobine arrived in Morocco with nothing but a little wedding money and an eagerness to discover what might happen next. In Casablanca, they chanced upon a dilapidated 1935 Austin London taxi, and after a little “persuading” , became its proud, new owners. With brazen abandon, they cranked up the tired old engine and headed straight into the open sands of the Sahara Desert. Their plan was simply 'go south', but little did they realize, they were beginning a four-year odyssey to the other side of the earth, and back. Their journey was long and adventurous – they were captured at gun-point, imprisoned in a desert fortress, and nearly killed more than once, but managed to continue onward, deeper and deeper into Africa. From the east coast they freighted the taxi to India, drove north into Pakistan, then Afghanistan. In India they met the boy Dalai Lama, who, grateful for their offers of support, gave them a small Tibetan dog. Onward they journeyed into Asia, and from the seats of their old taxi, they carved a path through the rain forests – two free-spirits with their new passenger, along for the ride.