Yellow

New Years in Peru is colour-coded.

Apparently, one is supposed to dress in a colour associated with an emotion they want to have more of in the new year.  One should wear red if they are looking for love, green if they are looking for more money, and yellow if they are looking for luck or happiness.  So, naturally, most people choose to wear yellow, since it’s probably not very well received if you announce to the world that you are greedy or easy.  Wearing black is also apparently not so good.

In Lima, people have taken this tradition one step further, and decided that your luck will only come true if you wear your colours close to your body, so a fantastic trend has arisen – New Year’s panties!  In the week between Christmas and New Years, vendors go crazy selling yellow panties for about a dollar… and you can buy them on the street… creepy.

Yellow Underwear

Yellow Flags

Piles of Yellow Underwear

Yellow Building

A Family-Friendly Yellow Elephant

Yellow Flowers, and Underwear

You might be wondering why I included a yellow building in the above photos.  Surely they didn’t paint an entire building just for New Year’s.  Of course, you would be correct.  But apparently, there is a reason why the vast majority of historical buildings in Lima Downtown are yellow.

Wanna hear it?

Okay.

Apparently, back in the olden days, some Spanish royalty came to visit Lima, and it was cloudy.  It happens to be cloudy for about half the year in Lima.  This visiting royalty was concerned about the morale of the colonists, and decided that to make everyone happy during the cloudy season, all the buildings were to be painted yellow, a bright and cheerful colour.  Or at least that’s what Ana Maria says.  Romy’s response is that Limans are happy enough, they don’t need to be cheered up!