AGUAS CALIENTE

Rotorua Morning Post, Volume 1, Issue 148, 15 February 1932, Page 7

AGUAS CALIENTE

BEAUTIFULLY DESIGNED GROUNDS.OF FAMDUS COURSE. PEN PICTURE. A correspondent, writing to "Salvator," a contributor to the Thoroughbred Record, of Lexington, Kentucky, United States, gives the following graphic pen picture of the Aguascaliente racecourse, where Phar Lap is to nieet America's crack hbrsesl "I had, of course, heard of Aguascaliente, and i had imagined it something like Tijuana; but it is as different as black from white. We drove through Tijuana, with its long street of salo'ons and dance halls, all cheap and tawdry, its ill-dressed Mexican hangers-on to those resorts, and its even more vicious-looking whitesj and travelling some five miles farther over just as nice concrete roads as there are anywhere. Rounding a curve, we saw spre'ad out before us a vista that turned my mind back to what I have read of the picturesqueness of Old Spain in the palrny days of that country. "At the entrance to the extensive tract of land on which the racing plant (a marvellous one) and still more marvellous hotel and bungalows are located is a tall and massive tower, Moorish in architecture, with minarets pointing upward, beautifully coloured in shades of cream, ecru, and pale pink. In the centre tower is a carillon of bronze bells, which, as each hour commences, sends a 'concord of sweet sounds' out on the flower-scented air — for all around the race plant proper and surrounding the big hotel, and in the patio it encloses, there' is such a wealth of flowers that one is almost overcome with wonder and admiration. Equisite Beauty. "The race track, with its exotic grandstand, clubhouse, and appropriately designed stables, is situated at the top of a level mesa, and is reached by a charming winding road. All the appointments are perfect, the buildings of Spanish or Spanish-Ame-rican architecture, with the same delicate colour scheme that marks the tower and hotel down below, with its regular village of bungalow houses for the use of visitors who prefer such a place rather than a suite of rooms in the hotel proper. The hotel covers at least two acres of land, and it surrounds a patio that, for exquisite beauty, has anything I have ever seen 'beaten a mile.' There are tall, graceful palm trees, great masses of brilliantly coloured and artistically massed flowers, fountains, finely-ar-ranged shrubbery; while South American macaws (large parrot-like birds), which flit from tree to tree, add to the tropical atmosphere of this most exotic place. "The casino is a place of real beauty; its furnishings, like those of the hotel proper, diffusing the air and spirit of Old Spain — not garish nor glaring, but extremely artistic and quietly rich. There are, of coUrse, all kinds of games of chance played there, and the vast room was crowded with those bent on testing their luck with the fickle godd'ess. The 'roughneck' element, which was so prominent at Tijuana, is non-existent at Aguascaliente.