Tarabuca Market day

  Tarabuco, Chuquisaca, Bolivia Sunday, May 1, 2016

This market is a large and in a small town about 1 1/2 hour's drive away. We had intended to get a local but but couldn't find where they went from so instead ended up on a tourist bus. No different reall except they charge you £4 instead of 40p and wait for you to come back! We couldn't really see much out of the window going as there was a big jesus sticker all over the window by our seats but we could see out of the front pretty well and it was a nice drive. We arrived at the town of Tarabuco and were greeted by the exuberant Katey. She enthused about her town and the hostel we had arrived at and invited us all to book lunch for when we had finished.Then after half an hour or so of Ketey gabbling on, we were excused and pointed towards the markets. There are 3 here. The first is the animal market where donkeys, goats, horses and bulls are bought and sold. Katey warned us to be careful as there were some animals bigger than bulls (and she didn't know the English name for) which she said were quite dangerous because of their size. Then there is the traditional Bolivian style markets which were are used to by now. This is where the woolley jumpers, woven fabrics and llama hats, scarves and gloves are to be found. Then there was the vegetable & Local's market. Katey explained that many people in this part of the market still operate on an exchange system; I'll give you a kilo of carrots for 2 kg of potatoes type of thing. This is where we headed to first. We had been warned that many people here did not like their photo being taken and so some of our photos are a bit wonky - we didn't want to upset anyone but really wanted to catch the essence of the market so had to conceal our phones a bit.The whole place was really interesting. It seemed as if every woman out there was also deep-frying chicken too. The place stank of chicken in hot fat. Running from the smell of chicken as it seemed to cling to us now, we headed for the tapestry/fabric market. We love markets like this as they have the amazing colours and nice things to look at and touch. One of the things we had looked for in other places, was a nice strap for our cameras but as yet hadn't been able to find one. They don't come ready made so anything we find will need to be adjusted into a camera strap. We had seen some guitar straps in La Paz but they were just not right for the purpose so we were on the look out here as well. We found an area where they made traditional tapestries - all hand made and they have stories woven into the design. They are very expensive though (around £30 for a small one) and as nice as they were we had to decline them - that's more than the price of a hotel room for the night.A bit further we saw some very similar style tapestry work but in long straps. Could these be what we needed for our cameras? Well the man on the stall understood what we needed and offered to make it into a camera strap for us for the bargain price of £11. More than we had planned to pay but it was so nice and nice to have a bit of the history and tradition with it. So we settled down in his small shop whilst he got to work on adapting it for us. It took us about half an hour including actually fitting it onto the camera as well. We were very pleased with the crude but effective result and we think he was too. Off we went around the market with a new camera strap around Jody's neck. We were very unprepared however, for the number of people that shouted out to her "muy bonito" (very beautiful) and pointed to her camera strap. Amongst the locals it had many admirers. We wonder just how many people are working on making camera straps now! We found some lunch in a local place and wandered up to see the animals. Unfortunately we were a bit too late and all that was left to see were some donkeys. We like donkeys so that's ok but we never did get to see those big animals Katey had gone on about. So some last minute purchases of a new woolley each and we headed back to Katey and where the bus was waiting.We really enjoyed this day out. This market was a little bit different from most of the others we had been to and it was fascinating to see. We spent more than we intended to but to be honest, we could have spent a fortune on all the lovely stuff they had here so we actually thought we'd done quite well!