Vamos al mercado!

Walking through the market.

We have spent many days walking to and from B Group school and passing by the sight that you see above. We knew there was a market of some type located one block away from school, but never really ventured in to see the different shops or look for anything. 

One Saturday, Monique and I decided to check it out while waiting for Aimee and Erin to finish class. As we began walking through the market, we realized it was MUCH bigger than we had previously anticipated! I thought it was - at the most - a couple blocks long. We made it about one block before we realized that the Carmen de la Legua market stretched down side streets and into a building as well!

A sidestreet of the market.

Looking into the market building. This was packed full of shops, too!

You can find just about ANYTHING at the market. There are clothes and shoes, fresh fruits and vegetables, mini restaurants serving ceviche or other typical foods, plants, cleaning products, school supplies, and whole chickens to be purchased, DVDs and way, WAY more!

An advantage of purchasing items at the market in Carmen de la Legua compared to going to a larger supermarket is that you can barter with the shop owners. Because of this, you can typically find much cheaper prices AND your money goes to local families!

One crazy aspect of the market is that at the end of each day, every shop is taken apart and carted away by the owners. This means that everything you see in these pictures is gone by the evening, and brought back the next day! I cannot imagine packing and unpacking my shop EACH day. That's a TON of work!

Beautiful plants and flowers for sale.

A cevichería - where you can purchase different types of ceviche. People will sit on the stools in the front and eat right there!

Another side street of the market. This section was specifically clothes.

You can buy just about every type of rice and corn here! I didn't even know that this many existed!

This picture captures only some of the varieties of fruits and vegetables you can buy here!

Need some cleaning products? They are available here!

Pick a cereal, any cereal! They will fill a bag with whatever you want!

Lots of shoes to choose from. :)

Echevela, the Berrospid family helper, shops at the market daily. She purchases most of the food that we eat at the market! This includes meat, fruit, vegetables, rice, and potatoes. She has also found some exotic Peruvian fruit that we have tried... pacay, granadillas, and tuna are a few. I'll have to show you pictures another day as I'm off to get my nails done for Yanina's wedding tonight! Can't wait to tell you all about it!