Market Day

For those of you who don’t know, I finally found an apartment! I’m going to give everyone a moment to soak in this wonderful thing.

*5 minutes later*

I could go on and on about the wonders of not living with a host family anymore, but this post is actually about something else. Since we are technically not allowed to move out until later this month, I’ve been slowly but surely buying furniture and appliances for the place. Since the best deals are found in Riobamba’s markets, not stores, I headed off this past Saturday to see what I could find.

And what a shock that was.

The best place to buy house stuff is Mercado Oriental, which is a HUGE open air market that fills up every Saturday and overflows into the adjacent streets. The place was so crowded that street traffic had virtually ceased and I had to squeeze between people just to get around. The vendors spread their wears on blankets and shout at passerbyers to stop while the herds of people inch by. The nicer things were probably freshly stolen, but I know where to get my stuff back if I’m robbed.

So this particular market is loosely divided into sections and I started in the house wears part. It’s not at all unusual to see vendor after vendor selling the EXACT same products, so sometimes you just have to randomly pick one. My personal strategy is to go to one vendor and buy a bunch of stuff so that way I can haggle for a better price and maybe get a free little gift. After honing in on one lady, I picked out the stuff I wanted and then preceded to whine about how expensive her stuff was and gave her the best 3 year old pouty face I could muster. Child-like whining is somehow magical in Ecuador because I got 4 pots, a (nice) Oster blender, 2 blankets and a tupperwear set for $80. She even threw in a pitcher!

After winding through this place, I came upon a few, well, interesting goods. There was one lady sitting on a blanket selling, and I kid you not, random nuts and bolts, piles of keys and small sections of chain links. Another woman was selling old, dirty pots, a broken mirror, dull, used butcher knives and probably the child in her lap if I offered enough. In the animal section there was all the 'usual' stuff: chickens, geese, ducks, cows, goats, pigs... But you could also buy yourself a box of puppies or kittens. Literally, puppies and kittens by the boxful. Some of the boxes were mixed, meaning that 10 puppies and 10 cats are crammed into the same little box, some with just puppies, some just cats, some with all puppies and 1 kitten. So how much does one of these boxes run for? $1 per animal. As you can imagine, you can find anything you want at this place if you’re paying with cash.

So now I have all the basics I need for my pad, minus a $1 puppy. Oh well, I can pick that up when I go back to buy a pile of old keys…