mercado central

The Mercado Central is this crazy, huge, tented area where the Real Peruvians go to shop for food and stuff. We see shirts, hats, dresses, aprons, eggs, raw meat, tea, vegetables, buttons, and everything else available in this country. I buy some more alpaca hats, because, I don´t need any justification.

We then embark on a quest to find a track suit uniform. In Peru, the schools´uniforms are one of two things: a boy-scout / prep school uniform, or the athletic track suit uniform with school´s name and logo on the back. We would like the latter. To take home with us. And wear in the States. Sadly, the fellow who sews them tells us he cannot sell these glorious uniforms to random strangers.

While looking around the neighborhood for counterfeit track suits, we run into a small market party, Peruvians dancing around to the band, drinking chicha and beer. They invite us to take a sip. We decline. They invite us to dance, which we are more likely to do, but instead just watch. Someone tells us it is the anniversary of the market. They celebrating.

Pretty soon I get cranky, and we turn our backs on track suits and search for a restaurant. We find a greasy, sketchy place that has a drawing of an alien in the window and a framed poster of The Lady and the Tramp. I have rice with fried egg and fried plantains. Huevos de la Cubana.

As we are eating, a parade marches down the street. This parade only has ten people and no costumes. It does not do it for me.

On our way back to our hostel, we stop into AeroCondor to see about getting plane tickets to Lima after our trek. THIS TAKES ONE HOUR. Not one hour of looking into flights and finding available seats. No, that takes about three minutes before we get the flight we want at the time we want. The lady at the desk says that they switched over from manual tickets to E-tickets YESTERDAY, and they are still learning the system. It takes three women one hour to print our tickets with the correct names and passport numbers. However, the office did have good candies, so there is that.

We internet for a while, listen to rocket and firecrackers outside, read some Bill Bryson, and have a nice sleep.