Heading Out Again

I was not looking forward to our trip to Peru. We have been enjoying Eureka, and it is quite a slog to Peru from there.

And yet.

Flying into Los Angeles we paralleled the gorgeous coast for a while, crossed immense tracts of single family houses, skirted the skyscrapers of downtown, and landed among the warehouses and hangars that turn the ground into a cement checkerboard. It’s an impressive cityscape. We overnighted near the airport, watching a corner of sunset from the rooftop dining area.

Most of the next day was our transit to Miami. In the early evening, flying up out of Miami toward South America, we crossed spectacular blue-green water streaked with sandbars pointing offshore. Where the sandbars end and the water deepens, clusters of tiny white sport fishing boats perch on the dark surface below me, like fluff from dandelions on a pond.

The flight crosses Cuba, where I see late afternoon storms forming under cumulous clouds that are impossibly high billows of white, so much taller from a plane than from the ground. I could see the different sides of a mountain range, one drier, one greener from the prevailing winds carrying rain.

These sights are an inspiration. The immensity of nature, the power of air and water, the beauty of patterns that form on their own from these forces at work, are the miracles of life.

We arrive in Lima at 10 pm, speed through immigration and customs and are in bed at the hotel by 11:30 pm, as good an outcome as possible. The next morning on my way to breakfast I see one of the plants in the meticulously kept garden has sent out new leaves of shiny yellow in startling contrast to the dark maroon red they will become. Nature is full of surprises.

I am amazed and delighted by my ability to see these things, to travel in planes and look out the window, and to have the time to think about the wonders around me.

Maybe it’s not a slog. It’s a new adventure.