A glorious blaze of colour

My husband, Greg, has been sick over the past few days. This year, it's not uncommon here for people to get a virus from mosquitos. Greg's been through a few symptoms that I'll just say have kept him close to home.

January 28, 2016

The first day he was sick I went for a walk without him, just stopping at a few stores for necessities. Considering I often say we're constantly talking to people here, I found I hardly spoke to anyone. I felt it just wasn't the same going solo, and I didn't really enjoy it.

Today I decided to take a more positive approach. I'd go for a walk to the beach, and reflect on the positive things about not having to cater to someone else.

I decided not to take the main street, but rather take some back roads. After all, it's a small town, so how far wrong can I go? Yep, it was the longest it's ever taken me to get to the beach. I think I saw streets we haven't been on before!

You will see from my photos that I stopped to take a longer look at flowers in all their glory. The flowers you'll see, all except the first one, were all within a short distance of each other. It was just a blaze of colour. Although some of these photos may appear similar, the variation of colour was just beautiful.

I wasn't sure of the name of this flower, so I had to look it up when I came home. Many of you will know it's a bougainvillea, or paper flower.

What I did notice today was there were tiny white flowers in the centre, which I didn't remember seeing when we first arrived. I looked at an earlier photo taken not long after we arrived, which you'll see is the first photo here, and there are no white centres showing.

I love the shades of orange seen together here

I did some more reading and learned that the colourful parts I thought were flowers are actually bracts that surround the tiny white flower. OK, many of you may know this, but it was a new discovery for me.

Would I have taken this much time with the flowers if Greg had been with me? I doubt it. Would I have arrived earlier at the beach? Probably. I laughed at myself, trying to find familiar landmarks ... do I recognize the horses in that field? Have I passed by that home before? I did get to the beach, eventually, but the beach part of the walk I'll save for another day.

I thoroughly enjoyed my solo walk today, which ended up taking more than two hours and I was pretty tired by the time I arrived home. It was good to do something independently, for a change. I'll be happier when Greg feels better though and is able to walk with me again :)

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Location: Lo de Marcos, Nayarit, Mexico

Weather: High 78ºF (26ºC), low 69ºF (21ºC)

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