To Market, To Market

Things are going pretty well in Tacna even though JP is not here.  On Saturday, I went to the market by myself for the first time.  We've mentioned the market before but haven't been able to give you any visuals.  However, when organizing our photos recently we found some photos from JP's time as a volunteer here--these are from 2003 but the market looks pretty much the same.

To get to the market we either take the bus that runs from Habitat to town and back, or take a colectivo, which is like a shared taxi.  The bus is 50 cents and the colectivo is 1 sol (~33 cents US), but the bus takes about 45 minutes and the colectivo only takes 15 minutes because it takes a more direct route.  Last year we mostly took the bus but lately we have been opting for colectivos.

Once we get to the market, our first stop is our abarrotes stand (Abarrotes basically means dry goods).  The market is made up of a million little stands, each one selling their own set of goods.  Here is JP (circa 2003) at ours (we still go to the same stand):

You can see that they pack the space they have, so instead of picking out our own stuff we tell them what we need and they collect it for us.  The large sacks you can see in the left of the picture are full of bulk items like rice, beans, popcorn, etc., and they are sold by weight.  We get all our dry goods like that, along with stuff like milk in a can or matches, and also detergent, dish soap, paper towels, etc.

From there, we head outside to the vegetables section, which is basically a huge parking lot where people have set up little stands selling vegetables.  To get there, we walk by the edge of the meat section, which we usually avoid:

This is another old picture but this stand is still on the corner and there are always pigs like this on display.

Anyway, in the vegetable section some people literally drive up in a truck and sell from the back of the truck, and when they are done, they leave, which means sometimes we have to dodge large trucks maneuvering in small spaces when we are just trying to buy vegetables.

Here is JP picking out onions:

Some of the sellers only have one thing, so we end up buying tomatoes from the tomato lady, corn from the corn lady, etc. There is a woman whose kids go to Miguel Pro that has what I think of as a green vegetable stand--from her we can get broccoli, green onions, zucchini, basil, spinach (thus the green in my head), and sometimes ají peppers, lemons, and green peppers too.  When we first went to the market we would wander around a little to find the best onions or tomatoes, but at this point we have found people with good produce so we usually just go back to them week after week.  Normally things are very fresh and very cheap!

After vegetables, we go back inside to check out the fruit section (no photos). This week I got 2 kilos (~4 1/2 lbs) of oranges and 2 pineapples for 11 soles (not quite $4).  At the end, we go to the chicken lady when needed:

Those are whole chickens, and she will cut them however you like. (Sometimes they still have the heads on them too!) But we usually buy just the breast, and she will cut out the innards and the other stuff so we just get the part we want, skin still on.  Sometimes it is still a little bloody, but the chickens are fresh.

From there, we lug our big bags out to the corner, wave down a bus, and can be home in about 20 minutes.  Here is an average haul after a weekly market trip:

Yum!  (This is from April when melons were still in season.)  All this food I think cost us around 70 soles, or $24. I think we will have sticker shock when we get back to the States!  I bought less than half this much food this week, of course, since I am only cooking for one, but it was still heavy by the time I got home.

JP will be back on Saturday with the Brophy group.  The group left Lima for Pisco today, and then will be arriving here Saturday afternoon.  Yay!