Wednesday, May 6, 2015

Inaquito

I don’t remember if I’ve addressed this in a previous post or not, but either way here goes.
If you want an imported good such as a box of Frosted Flakes or some other US good, it is extraordinarily expensive. That’s just part of the price of living in a country that has somewhat limited trade flexibility with the United States. However, if you want produce it is cheap. Like super crazy cheap. Like stupid cheap.

Every Saturday, Shannon and I take a short trip to the Inaquito Market. Surrounding the market is a series of little tiendas that vary in their specialty. I would say that about a third of them are florists where you can buy two dozen gorgeous roses for $4 or so. Another third of them is assorted plastic goods such as Tupperware and pitchers and the like. The last third is liquor stores.

I won't show you what it looks like
before it gets to the plate.
When you walk into the market which is essentially a large warehouse, you see a food court to the side where you can buy hornado. Hornado is pretty much the only thing you can buy. Hornado is an typical Ecuadorian plate that consists of fried bite sized pieces of pork. You also get a sliced avocado and choclos large kernel corn, all for about $3. The whole raw dead pig is usually hanging on a hook or on the counter. They will carve it for you depending on what you want and then fry it up. It sounds gross. It looks gross. It kind of is gross. But, the food is delicious.

When you walk past the cafeteria area, you find a variety of stands that serve as makeshift butchers. None of the meat is wrapped or refrigerated so we haven’t really taken them up on their fantastic prices but we hear the quality is good.

Then, past all of that is the goldmine. You arrive at a flea market style setup with rows and rows of fresh fruit, vegetable, and spice stands. In the spice stands you can buy all of the spices you need from curry to chili pepper, to cayenne pepper, to ginger, to well..you get the idea. They usually sell a bag that is a quarter of a pound for a dollar or so.
Rows and rows and rows of delicious options

The fruit and vegetable stands are equally as appealing. The owners try to give you a gringo price and expect you to haggle but sometimes we find that it’s hard to argue over .10 worth of a price when you are getting such a great deal. For example, we usually get 6 or 8 oranges for a dollar. We buy a pound of strawberries for a dollar or less. We get 6 apples for a dollar. We buy a bushel of peppers for a dollar. Fresh heads of lettuce, cabbage, parsley, celery all cost about .40 apiece.
All in all we bring a backpack and two reusable grocery bags and buy about 15 pounds of produce to use for the week for cooking and snacks and we spend less than $20. It’s another unexpected advantage of living here. I’ll take the $7 Frosted Flakes for this deal any day.


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