El Mercado Central de Sucre* B

Markets are usually bursting with colors, smells, sounds and all kinds of people. That is why I like them, and so far the Sucre market is my favorite of all. Here there are more fruits and veggies in one place than I have ever seen before. Besides the mountains of amazing produce, what I like most about it is that every stall is owned and manned by a different person. You always go to your favorite vegetable vender or fruit vender. In the Sucre market our veggy lady is Mamita.

We always leave Mamita with huge heavy bags full of tomatoes, peppers, beets, carrots, onions, lettuce and a lot of free extra stuff, yapa. In Bolivia all of the venders give a little extra for free to bring you back again! Mamita usually gives us extra carrots, onions, basil, tomatoes and a few spicy peppers with a wink.

The Sucre market is big, bigger than any market we have been to. Its two levels are full with all the food you might need and even more. Every time we go there, it is bustling with hundreds of people eating soup, buying veggies, selling stuff or just chatting and hanging out. The halls and passageways are always full of noises echoing. Some of the paths are cave-like, lit only with bare white bulbs and are so narrow that the opposing lines of pedestrian traffic can barely pass each other. These open up into the bright light of the interior market square. The square is lined with juice venders perched on their high thrones decorated with fruits. Their customers sitting on low benches are dwarfed by the stall from which their liquid delights are coming from.

The main entrance to the Sucre market is lined with rainbows formed of thousands of fruits, most of which I don’t know the name of. Tarps set up to block the sun and rain cast orange light upon everything. The first time we entered through this entrance our mouths dropped. If there was a paradise for all fruit lovers, this was it!

After our mouths closed they couldn’t help but start watering and when the temptation was too strong we settled for a box of strawberries and a bag of giant figs.

Eggs and cheese are plenty, as well as yogurt, butter, pasta, cat food, potatoes, fruit juices and smoothies, avocados, bread, knifes, soups and many, many more things then you can even imagine.

We were lucky with Sucre because our apartment had a kitchen. This allowed us to cook all of the food we got from the Market! We wouldn’t have stayed here so long if we had not stumbled upon this amazing hostel. This is how our kitchen looked before we moved in~

To me there is no comparison between markets and supermarkets. Supermarkets are indoors usually with no windows and you can’t make friends with stall owners because there aren’t any! Supermarkets are not as colorful or full of smells and spices. I think that markets are also places of community, gathering many people into one place and I like that.

Do you like markets? How does your dream market look like?

Boryan