The Mercado (Market Place)

We spent part of the day at Socorro school and Don became frustrated after we had the computers booted. It seems that this donation of computers comes with a freezer type program that locks the programs on the computers and does not allow anything new like a virus checker for instance to be loaded and saved. When he reached his frustration level we left and then had to find things to do for nearly four hours while we waited for the laundry to be ready for pick up. We took at 'took-took' taxi back to the mercado and I pulled out my camera.

Street Vendors

The Mercado covers several city blocks. Most of it is covered, more or less, if it rains many of the vendors cover their items for sale with plastic and business goes on as usual. This section (above) is a long line of vendors on what was once a street (I'm guessing here) You can find nearly anything you could want out here as well as inside. Here we have paper towels and hats and a vendor with sunglasses followed by a stall with a large assortment of bags and purses.

The photo below is several stacks of jeans and above shirts. The young man is the vendor who inserted himself into the shot. Sometimes these guys want you to pay them to take their pictures but I was not taking a shot at him but the jeans. I am not sure how you would actually select a pair of these and if you would ever find your size.

Jeans and Shirts

The Guatemalans love their  sweet stuff from candy which you see below and they also love sweet breads. You can find shops all over that will sell you sweet breads. There is also a growing market of American foods like McDonald's, Burger King, Pollo Compero, and list continues to grow as are the Guatemalans. They also have a growing problem with diabetes as their staple diet is corn tortillas, rice and black beans.

Sweets and Candies

For me there is still a bit of a problem when it comes to buying meat here. They do not have the same standards for meat that the US has and I cannot buy meat at a stall like the one below. This is way inside the mercado and the area around this stall has other types of meat from white sausage, raw slabs of liver, and chickens that just sit out here for who knows how long. Can't do it!

Beef Vendor

I have discovered why we are nearly always served strange "chicken parts" in some locations okay for gringos to eat -- they hack them apart with a very large meat cleaver! When we were here the first time I had a hard time identifying the parts of the chicken we were actually eating. Now I know the rest of the chicken story.

   Fruits and Vegetables

Fruits and Vegetables on market day are there for you to choose from.  In our case we are limited by how much we want to carry home on a bus. Once again we loaded up on a bus today with our laundry and our veggies and were pushed all the way to the back of the bus. I had to laugh once as the driver kept picking up people and they kept making their way to the back because at some point the back just had to fill up. When the back filled up the ayudante appeared at the back door (via the top of the bus) and help us to disembark by the back door.

Don Returning with the Laundry

I am waiting near the bus stop to return to the apartment with our selection of vegetables while Don picked up the laundry. He is carrying a back pack and I have a large purse/bag and a small sling backpack with my long sleeve shirt in it and the shopping bag with veggies. Can you understand how much they love us on these chicken buses?  Of course there are many others who carry stuff and sometimes it ends up at the very front on the bus or on top. We tend to hang on to the stuff that is ours, not being willing to share so much with others.

Today I will leave you with a photo I took for Nick. We arrived at the 'bus barn' (for want of a better description) and these young men were unloading the top of their bus. They tie down everything they put up there and can get it down in record time. If they put luggage up there they cover it with canvas. These chicken buses are really amazing, mostly uncomfortable, but amazing just the same. It is affordable enough that nearly anyone can pay for passage to different parts of the city or even the country.