Today, we went down to the wholesale market, which I've mentioned before...It used to be a racetrack. Now, it's filled with trucks and fruits, veggies, and all kinds of other goods. I wanted to take the kids, just so they could see the volume of food that gets sold each day. I also wanted them to see the vendors, and get more of an idea who grows the food, hauls it into the city, and gets it sold.
If you want to raise eyebrows, be a blond family, or a taller family, or a taller and blond family-and go to a Colombian marketplace. The boys' very light hair, and their sister's long straight blond hair got a lot of looks. I also get looks, which I understand, because I feel rather gigantic--but hey, it's great for seeing over crowds! Middle Man was feeling tall...
Here are the scenes of the day:
These large truck buses need room to manoeuvre, so we just waited while the parking fellas shouted instructions and distances to him...the buses haul produce, and goods, depends...
One of the spiffiest stalls, and not the usual...
Cheers and chao!
I should have added that while we were at the stall, there was a little drink stop behind, where a number of the vendors and shoppers were stopped, and the salsa was thumping away...and a guy was smoking inside the doorway, so the curling smoke was backlit by the sun-- but it's tough to write smells--so I didn't include anything about the diesel fumes choking the entrances as they chugged away. The kids had a few words, like how they didn't love the smell of the rotting vegetation in the cans, or the cigarettes, and they thought a l-i-t-t-l-e more room to move would have been good...but overall, they liked seeing it--they were appropriately awed at the number of platanos there were-literally, tonnes. The city eats platano by the tonne.
ReplyDeleteThere are two levels on the stalls, for the management of the crates, and there are guys chucking the crates off the second level, to guys on the floor, guys on the floor were tossing them up to the guys in the lofts...guys were pushing stacks of them across the concrete floor to load them into the trucks for tomorrow...their transport sacks were crushed down and tied to ready them for the next load...guys were walking around with wooden pull carts with about 250kg of potatoes, or beans...and little grannies getting only, and exactly, the vegetables and fruits that were THE best ones... and men walking through with sacks over one shoulder, out to wherever they needed to go...and a whole lot of bumping and dodging!