I´ve never been moved to write about cloud formations before.  But la garúa is weird. 

Flying here from my connection in Bogotá, the skies were so clear that I had a perfect view of the ground during almost the entire flight.  I could see the jungle and clay-colored rivers, then foothills building into mountains.  In the valleys were towns along yellow dirt roads.  It was like playing with Google Earth in my living room, but real. 

Right around the time it dawned on me that I could probably get some good photos of the Andes juxtaposed with the wing of the plane, we approached what looked like a styrofoam cooler lid floating in the sky.  This was no mere cloud, more like the boss at the end of a level in a video game.  It was la garúa. 

I´m not sure what la garúa translates to in Spanish, but it´s further personified as a force to be reckoned with by the fact that, to my ear, it sounds a lot like the Cajun name for the bogeyman, Le Rou-Garou.

La garúa isn´t necessarily all that ominous, though.  More like what I said a few paragraphs ago - weird.  It looks like the smog that blankets Calcutta, except it doesn´t give me headaches or irritate my sinuses.  It gives the light a constant late afternoon quality, to the degree that, even at 10 in the morning, it feels like the day is coming to an end already, better hurry or you won´t make it to the Archaeology Museum before closing time. 

The garúa is also responsible for the damp feeling in the air, as if the sky might open up into a storm at any moment.  Except that this is the dry season.  And Lima is in the desert.  Rain is virtually impossible. 

I´m having a kind of love-hate thing with la garúa.  On one hand, how often do you visit a place so thoroughly defined by a cloud?  On the other hand, the strangeness makes me a little anxious.  I keep expecting that headache, the storm, and nightfall at noon.  Maybe all that the same time.  I like Lima OK so far, but la garúa turns my thoughts to tomorrow´s bus through the desert to Arequipa, out from under the thumb of this meteorological Rou-Garou.