Market Madness

Since the close of our time in Uyuni we've been spending the majority of our time city hopping: from Potosí to Sucré to Cochabamba to La Paz, passing our days in the vibrant and over-flowing streets and our nights on bumpy, packed, and non-airconditioned buses. While the pollution, traffic, packs of dogs, and sheer number of bowling-hat-clad people bustling about their business and filling the city with life have all been a far cry from the pristine silence of the empty plains of Patagonia, by far the most mind boggling part of our urban adventures has been the market scene. Let me explain.

(Journal excerpt, 4.10.13)

Bolivian markets = da BOMB. They are UNREAL. They are OUTRAGEOUS. Literally, just overflowing mounds of bananas, glowing mangoes, kiwis, papayas, coconuts, SUCCULENT (as in... not rotten... and also very large!) grapes, shiny, shiny apples (like, maybe a little worrisomely shiny..), apricots, plums, MARACUYAS, the list goes on... fresh rounds of goat cheese, crispy bread loaves of every shape, size, and level of seeded-ness imaginable, racks of meat (seriously - there were cow noses. Splotches, fur, nostrils and ALL!) hanging raw and bloody, suspended overhead and all around... not to mention the cake ladies! Just giant, elaborately frosted wedding cakes. Rows and rows of them. And the little juice señoras, standing behind raised counters stacked 5 feet high with every fruit imaginable, blender cords in hand - ready to do battle and emerge victorious, master of the freshest juice you'll ever find... from the freshest fruit in the land of the grand. The potatoes. The avocados. Hundreds. Maybe thousands. Stacked, piled, jumbled, rolling, escaping from the giant rice bags in which they await their fate as our (second!) lunch. Endless heaps of dried pasta. And rice and quinoa and beans. Stacks of flats of eggs.

And everywhere, the piercing shout of the vendors, selling their goods. And everywhere, the wails of the stocky mamitas upstairs, stirring pots big enough to shield a standing child completely from view, full to the brim with bubbling caldos, sopas de maní, de pollo, picantes, chorizos, sizzling pans of fried chicken and llama and casaucho. Pyramids of boiled poatoes, yellow pastas, and arroz. And more arroz. And more. Salsas of every hue of green. And red and brown.. hungry customers queuing up to receive their comida of choice with not a moment of wait. Never a moment of rest. The market is a welter of writhing bodies, energies, voices. Cacauphony. The plenitude of food, of action, is ineffable. It might just be that a day at the mercado central is the sine qua non of a true Bolivian experience.

Piggy backing!

In a rare moment that we opted to spend outside of the market in Sucré, we decided to attempt the much-acclaimed hike to Las Siete Cascadas (Seven Waterfalls). After more than an hour of climbing down a steep slope of scree with not a single waterfall in sight (we did see a barely existent trickle of a stream, though!), we somehow found ourselves in the back of a flatbed truck packed (literally there were 50 Bolivians all traveling with huge rice sacks of potatoes and corn. Also, there were 10 goats.) with people heading back to town.. All in all, a short hike, but a grand success, as far as riding smushed together with an entire villages worth of people on a long, BUMPY, and dusty road goes. Diggin' the public transportation!

I know you can't see the goats from this angle.. but they were down there. All ten of them.