To Market, To Market To Buy . . . . . .

Sunday 28 January

Our first breakfast at Hotel Su Merced was not an inspiring affair - even Colin didn’t fancy lemon meringue pie for breakfast - so we were ready in plenty of time to met Karina at 09.00. She led me to the car – and there was my coat – reunited at last – together with the camera pouch and bits. I had obviously been very lucky and I felt very relieved. Today’s destination was Tarabuco Market, about 65 kms north-east from Sucre – the opposite direction to our journey yesterday. The journey took about 1 ¼ hours, again over the Andes, across high plateaus, and down into the valleys, only to crawl up the other side, by means of numerous hairpin bends, but the scenery was much greener than yesterday, and the farms on the whole looked more prosperous. There were lots of fields of potatoes and corn but the valleys still looked dry at the bottom as the rains haven’t reached here yet – soon this will be crisis, as they are only able to grow crops in the few short months of the rainy season – December to March. The predominant rock here was still red sandstone, and with most of the houses being built of adobe bricks with red tiled roofs, the whole landscape appeared green, with large and small terracotta splodges.

As we neared Tarabuco, lots of indigenous people were walking towards the town, with their donkeys loaded with produce they would sell at the market - although most of the sellers travel to the market in the back of a fleet of 8-ton lorries, all herded in with their wares. It’s amazing how many people you can get in one of these large earth-moving trucks, even with all their packages. They have a huge tarpaulin to put over everybody if it should be raining, but we were very lucky again today, the sun was shining and the sky a brilliant blue with just a few large fluffy cumulus clouds floating by. Wandering around the market in the rain wouldn’t be much fun.

We arrived at Tarabuco and parked alongside lots of coaches and minibuses which had brought tourists here from the surrounding cities and towns. This was once just a bartering place for local people, who would bring their produce to exchange for other necessary goods with people from nearby villages, on a Sunday – a non-working day. It was also a good opportunity to meet with others and catch up on the local gossip. But farmers and weavers from as far away as Sucre started to come to sell their wares here too, and the market grew. It is one of the few areas where local people still dress in their traditional costumes including hats, and that attracted the tourists, so that now it is a thriving market, of hundreds of stalls, covering many of the adjoining streets as well as the square, where people come to barter, buy or just browse on a Sunday morning.

We wandered around the square and branched off down the side streets to look at all the goods on display. Many of the stalls had woven goods, both local hand made materials from Tarabuco, as well as factory produced ponchos, table cloths, wall hangings and bags and belts of all shapes and sizes. It was easy to spot which was hand made locally and which were made by machine – not just that the patterns were often more intricate, showing birds and animals, feasts and celebrations, trees and flowers, on those from the factory, compared to more sober stripes with diamonds, circles and other shapes within the design, but the factory ones were in bright garish colours, while the local people only used natural dyes from the plants and leaves found nearby, and so their materials tended to be in dark reds, black and oranges. There were many of these stalls around the square, interspersed with sweet stalls – Bolivians definitely have a sweet tooth and love all the lollies, chocolates and popcorn (made without oil – just roasted till it pops and then sugar coated) – tools, such as pick axe blades, chisels and nails and second hand clothing. We turned off into an area selling lots of hats –dark felt derbys that had been so popular in the US in the 1930’s, as well as the traditional helmets and bonnets – and shoes – sandals and easy wear shoes, many made from old bicycle tyres that we were told never wear out. Passing down another street, we came to household goods, such as Omo, Surf and Ariel in plastic bags, huge bars of yellow and green soap, batteries galore, hair decorations, jewellery and much more.

One block away from the square, was a long road full of food stalls – lots of huge red plastic bags of coca leaves, which, of course, the local people chew all the time (as the leaves are dried, we were told it was very coarse and hurt the inside of the cheek when first chewed, but that eventually it would become easier and not so sore with more chewing – the antiseptic properties prevent the mouth getting infected, as well as providing more energy, aiding digestion and cleaning teeth and gums – it really is considered a ‘wonder leaf” in these parts). We passed stalls with meat hanging all round, others selling just the fat and skin of the animals. There were crates of fruit and vegetables that had been brought from the lowlands (interior Bolivia), like bananas, mangoes, and pineapples where the climate is more tropical, as well as all the local fruit and vegetables. Finally we came to a huge warehouse style building, fenced off, where all the donkeys used for transporting goods, were left to graze while their owners tried to sell their goods.

On the ground around the building, and the whole of the floor space inside, sat people selling their own grown foods, such as broad beans, carrots, chillies in all sorts of shapes and sizes, herbs, and even small avocadoes only just larger than a large egg. There were lots of different fruits – figs, tuna fruit, apples and many I didn’t recognize. Lots of small children accompanied the sellers here – it was obviously a family day out. Some women were here just to purchase, and were wearing their “Sunday best” clothes - shiny satin skirts and beaded tops. Most of the women wore hats in various designs, one denoted they were single and looked like a black fez with lots of beads and sequins around the front and top, and long black velvet neck cover at the back. Others looked like hard helmets (as worn by the German army prior to World War I without the spike on top) decorated with beads around the edge (these were worn by both men and women), while some women wore what looked like a panama decorated with flowers and baubles. These were very different to any of the hats we had seen in other places in Bolivia or Peru.

We retraced our steps and I bought a couple of things off different traders – a woven scarf in bright reds, yellows, and blues, a pencil case in locally woven material, and a silver ring (I know I said I wouldn’t buy anything else silver, but it was all in a good cause). By now it was time for lunch. We hadn’t seen any restaurants on our travels, just street traders frying up lots of greasy looking chunks of chicken with the thick skin still attached, beef in a garish sauce, and lots of vegetables in plastic buckets! At a drinks stall, a lady was pouring out the home made sodas and beers into plastic bags, offered with a straw for 1 Boliviano, as bottles were a precious commodity. Karina led us down a quiet street to a small café, with a larger courtyard out the back. We were to have the set meal of salad, corn soup, meatballs for Colin, and vegetarian hamburgers for me, followed by a vanilla version of crème caramel or egg custard – which Colin really enjoyed. The meatballs were quite tasty, I believe, and my vegetarian hamburgers turned out to be bean and herb patties, with a small dollop of home made tomato sauce on top. They were cold, but once you adapted to that, they were quite tasty but very filling. Both main courses were served with chips and rice – as is the Bolivian custom. We also drank the café out of home made lemonade which was very good. Service was extremely slow, so we sat in the shade of a sheet tied over a wooden cross frame and discussed the differences between eating in England and eating here in Bolivia.

Lunch took nearly two hours! and by the time we emerged from the café Julio was waiting to transport us back to the hotel. This meant I had a couple of hours to blog, while Colin managed to find a football match on the television and listen to more of his book. When I finished a “Star Wars” film was just starting – not being a great fan, I hadn’t seen it before – and still feeling full up from our lunch we decided to skip dinner and watch the film.

As we hadn’t brought much with us, packing up for our flight tomorrow was a doddle, so that we were in bed at a reasonable hour.