Los Colores

The number of colors and the types of colors that I have seen here are pretty unbelievable.

Cusco’s flag is the arcoiris, the rainbow because rainbows here are all but rare. Since the weather here changes in the blink of an eye (LITERALLY), the light reflecting off the rain happens easily, and in everyway possible. I have seen full rainbows, double rainbows, think and thin rainbows, rainbows without the BIV, rainbows with 13 different colors in it. Bright rainbows, dim rainbows, and rainbows where I swear I can walk to where it begins.

The sky as it set in the desert, when we were on the bus back from Mollendo, was the pinkest, orangest, yellowest sky I’ve seen yet, with bits of twilight settling in as it got darker outside. This was the same night as the closest moon to the earth in a while.

When the gray gray clouds finally part and the blue of the sky shows, the light blue is so free and clear I want to go swimming in it. I swear it is bluer and lighter than in the US. I can smell the brightness of the sky.

Orange, or at least shades of it, run wild and free. The peachy pinky color of lúcuma, the second most interesting fruit ever (next to guanabana) and my favorite, is the walls of San Blas. The roofs here, the ceramic half moon tiles on every house in Cusco scream with the burnt orange they own.

In the rainy season the grass on the mountains is so fresh and clean. Where ever I look it’s the same beautiful color. At night. the yellow and orange light from the houses scattered all over the city. From the plaza de armas it looks like its going to consume the valley.

The sky at dusk on a clear night, when the blue of the sky is in that perfect balance between real dark and swimmable blue, with the clouds reflecting the yellow sun as it sets behind the mountains, is a unique color that I don’t even want to try to explain. It was the color we saw tonight in our ciencias politicas clase when we were talking about what is democracy in America Latina. When we were talking about Guatemala’s inequality and Uruguay’s 89%. When we were thinking about the world we live in and trying to make since of this thing called politics, that seems to mean more to people in all countries that we know.