Sunday Market

In our little village of San Jacinto we have a fruit and vegetable truck that parks on Fridays from 10-2pm, and most of the tienda owners buy from him to supply their stores over the weekend. But the real shopping and stocking up for the week happens at the Sunday market in Charapoto. It's a short bus ride, we've paid anywhere from .35 cents to a dollar but getting a ride is easier, yesterday we got a ride and were in and out within an hour.

This is taken from the park above the street, this is only half of it, there are twice as many vendors down past the big tree (and stretching down the side streets). This section is mostly chicken, fish, cheese and peanut butter. The meat vendors are around the corner down the next block. (If you were to turn left at the multi story building.)

This section is what we call Grocery Row, and the vendors have everything from plastic wares to toilet paper. This is where you get bagged sugar, crackers, shampoo, and only with ten cent mark up from the big stores in the Big city, for convenience sake, I can spare .10 cents if it saves me a trip.

The piles of ruble are from all the work they are doing, the city (town) has really been doing a "beautify the square" project, new benches, and revamping the landscaping, it's looking very nice.

We have our favorite vendors, we've made relationships over the months and they give us deals and regalos (gifts). Things fluctuate, two weeks ago oranges were 10/$1 but Yesterday they were 20/$1. I bought a pound each tomatoes, green peppers, purple onions, potatoes, carrots, strawberries, half a cauliflower head, half a cabbage, a large pineapple, 5 bananas and a dozen eggs ALL for $6.50 that should certainly last me the week, but if I do run out of something, one of our places in town will have it. It's crowded, and sometimes overwhelming, but the market is a fun adventure, something I would surely miss if we moved away.

I pilfered these two photos from the web, so you could see what a vendor looks like. (Thanks to John MacDonald for not being as shy as I am about taking people's pictures.) These  lucky vendors get the shady side of the street, and this is where our favorites are located. The market starts early around 730 I'd say, and the chicken and fish vendors pack up the earliest, leaving by 11, then the veg start packing up around noon. By one o'clock, you'd never know it was there...

The guy who brings his truck to town, goes to other towns too, on Thursday he's in San Clemente, and probably Bahia on Monday (they have a big market on Monday). I'm working on pictures of our favorite places in our little town, so my next post will be about our neighborhood, maybe I'll get brave and ask our people for their picture too. Til then, stay tuned...the adventure continues!