The Best Bag at the Market

... the best bag in the market ...
... no second one under the counter ...
don't send us any orders
... there was only one in the whole market ...

We found the best bag in the San Telmo market place five stalls into the afternoon of shopping. We didn’t know it was the best bag in the market yet. “Don’t buy the first thing I see in the market. I will find it cheaper at the end of the market.” That generally works for me.

We walked 20 blocks of market, looking for more of the same bag but looking at everything else – never getting tired. The literature says the market prices are fair; don’t bargain with the merchants. The market was fantastic – vendors polite, no one calling from the stalls, no one putting pressure on passers by, a polite interchange about the prices, which we have to divide by 7 so that times. “This is a market designed for Canadians – so polite.”

Twenty blocks is a long market. Just when I thought we were at the end of the market there would be a rise and a fall in the street and I could see more stalls side by side, on both sides of the streets, displaying belts, shoes, purses, shawls, souvenirs.

Wyona and I stopped to figure out what use to make of the calabash gourds we kept seeing.  Hundreds of them on display. “Don’t leave Argentina without drinking some of this tea,” someone who could speak English told us. “The metal spoon is the straw through which to drink the tea (mate). A cheaper straw comes with the gourd. Or you can buy one of the more expensive ones.”

 The vendor was taking the straw apart to show us how to clean the straw. The translator old us what she knew and then asked him questions herself.

We didn’t ever see food in the market. We think it is because it is too hot to have fresh vegetables and fruit in the sun all of the time.  Eight days of eating only meat is like going on the Atkin's diet, I think.

... we had no idea that the market would go for miles ...
this picture is a quick study
on the unevenness of the cobblestones
 ...an exercise in trip, stumble and lurch ...

Five hours of market and then we realized closing time was near and we would have to make a run for that first shop. The street we walked on was heavily cobblestoned, rough rocks, we fell into each other all along the way. I watched a man with a stroller try to push a baby along – no luck, the wheels were getting stopped every few minutes.

To get that bag, we ran back the 20 blocks.

Greg calls it a scout run.

I only know I wasn't able to run and talk, so I didn't do any talking.

I am not going to get left behind.

Arta