Color Commentary - Nicaragua is Bright! What color is your shirt?

It's amazing what a change of scene can do.  When you come from the rather dull grey monotone of the Oregon winter, the vibrant colors of Nicaragua couldn't be more striking.  

We spent yesterday walking around and exploring the old historical city of Granada in on the shores of the giant lake Nicaragua.  It was at times, eye popping.  I took a lot of pictures, but they never seem to truly portray the impact of the variety and intensity of the colors here.

Since we have a nice rental car (a truck actually, a Toyota Hilux, the kind with the extended cab and four wheel drive that are a staple in developing countries) we can get around almost anywhere.

Including the hardware store.  TK has asked me to help install a flushing toilet at their homestead, and we went researching for parts and pieces.  We found a good place and pulled in and had a discussion about toilets, and pipes, and valves, and fittings.  Even a sink too!  Great fun!

They were in kind of a hurry to leave, and were closing the place up at 2:00 on a Saturday.  The proprietor told us that everybody wants to go home and drink.  

Even the supermarkets are bright colors

Our destination yesterday was the old city of Granada, a place a four hundred year history full of classical old colonial buildings, churches, and plazas.  And color.  They don't use subdued pastels and earth tones here, it's all bright primary colors.  

I have included several pictures scattered through this blog post, trying to capture the flavor of the town.  I will let them speak for themselves without explanation. 




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A funny thing happened the evening we arrived at our AirBNB house in Catarina.  One of the challenges in getting around most developing countries, including this one, is that they don't have very good directions. 

The streets are not marked and there are few directional signposts.   You just have to sort of wing it.   When we pulled into this small town, we thought we had a general idea of where the house was.  We were dead wrong. 

We drove around a while and without luck and realized it was hopeless.  We had no address and not a clue how to find the place.  Luckily we discovered we had a phone number, apparently for the "caretaker".

We called him but the conversation immediately went off the tracks.  He said "turn left, turn left, turn right, turn left and look for the white gate."
What?  How do you even know where we are?  We just start randomly turning and expect to find the place?  We've already done that. 

We're thinking maybe this guy will come out on the street and meet us.  Jenny asked him "what color shirt are you wearing?"  

We can just picture the guy looking down at his shirt, "what color shirt am I wearing?  Why does this matter?"  He eventually answers "it's blue, kinda dark or light blue, maybe like chartreuse?  periwinkle? maybe a little darker?"

This information proved to be worthless, because he was standing inside the gate and we couldn't see him.  Ha! Ha! Ha!  He probably thought the question was completely strange.  He eventually sent a young lady down to meet us at the corner, and we made our way to the house. 

When we finally met up with him, we decided his shirt was more like navy blue with little stripes.  It's important to determine these fashion questions.