Roof Tops

I like pictures of roof tops. I don't know why. I've always been drawn to them. Perhaps because we're so used to looking at our cities from the bottom up. Or perhaps they are some unconscious metaphor about how life looks different if you come at it from a different perspective. Or maybe it's just meaningless.

Anyway, I've been experimenting with taking my own photos of rooftops. Here's one from Harper's Ferry this weekend:

I like the different textures here, in the shingles, the brick and the stone wall. The perspective interests me as you have the roof in the far left so close to the ground. The three chimneys and the lampost make a rough arc. And the colors, with the red, green and white, are vivid.



Here's another, from Cusco, Peru. I like this one because the rooftops of Cusco are themselves framed by a roof-shaped window. The roofs stretch into the distance until they blend into the mountains, the roof of the world, if you will.

Anyway, this is all pretty silly, I guess. But beauty is in the eye of the beholder.

Cusco

In Cusco now, at 11,000 feet elevation in the Andes. The thinner air made itself known as soon as we stepped off the plane, my heart raced and it felt harder to breathe. Walking up a flight of stairs is difficult. And think about that -- I´m a person who bikes everyday and I live on one of the steepest hills in DC.

It´s getting better though, I think my body is adapting. To help, we went down to the Mercado Centro and bought coca leaves. This is the same plant used to make cocaine, but everyone here chews them and it raises the metabolism and helps with the altitude sickness. I´m drinking a tea steeped in its leaves right now. The stairs are getting easier and, man I really love ya...

Cusco is the longest continously inhabited city in the Americas. It was the captiol for the Incas, whose population once reached 15 million and who built 15,000 miles of roads through the Andes. And then the Spanish invaded and the civilization fell. The LTR and I toured a church built by the Spanish in the mid 1600s over the remains of the Inca Emperorer´s palace. Several huge altars guilded with gold stolen from the Incas grace the church.

Tomorrow we´ll do more touring and coca leaf chewing and then Thursday we start our five day hike of the Inca Trail.

One cool thing -- this is our first time in the Southern Hemisphere. We´re seeing stars we´ve never ever seen. ¡Fantastico!