Here are a few pics. The first is of a hamburg stand. Actually, we have not found it open yet, but over near the "fruit lady", her daughter sets up a grill on the sidewalk and sells hamburgs. They are bigger around than we make them in US and Canada. There is a thin pattie of ground beef, deep fried, with a deep fried egg on top, and french fries, on top of that. They are boiled in oil in a time blackened wok over a gas burner. Then comes some lettuce and tomato and a bit of chopped cilantro in fresh lime juice, then with the topping of your choice. My choice is Ahi which is a mustard like sauce made fresh with habanero peppers. That whole beautiful masterpiece costs a mere 3 soles.
(1 sole is about .45 cents) I don't get them often: only when I need a lube job and am feeling low in cholesterol and trans-fats.
When we go on a "fresh fruit run", we go to see the "fruit lady". She has a little fruit shop in the front of her house shown in picture 2 & 3. The open door leads back to a space where a few chickens are kept, some young turkeys and a couple pens of cuy ( pronounced coo-ee or guinea pigs). In this house, as in many, the living quarters for people and critters are very close. The rooms are dark and cave like and ,she keeps a pot cooking over a small wood fire in the small courtyard just through that rear door. She is a single parent.We always buy our fruit from her, and clean it well when we get it home.
As you walk through the neighborhoods you often hear roosters crowing, as a lot of people keep a few chickens. The last picture is of a small tienda, or store across the street from the fruit lady where more fruit and a lot of vegetables are sold, as well as meat which is displayed in the open and side by side. The chicken was probably running around earlier that morning, and this vendor uses a cleave to cut the fresh meat on a well used wooden cutting board, puts the meat in a bag on the scale with her bare hands,takes money for the sale with same unwashed, but maybe wiped on her apron, hands, and carries on . Business is brisk.
On the table are a few of our purchases from the fruit lady and the pineapple came from the vendor on the street from the back of his moto. The mangos, oranges bananas, peaches and pineapple would have cost about 12 soles. We consume a lot more fresh fruit than hamburgers.
In Trujillo there are two parallel economies. The mall is very modern, clean, expensive, and North American in appearance. There are always lots of people there, but I suspect it accounts for a very small percentage of overall purchases of food and other items. However, the mall is surrounded by neighborhoods that are definitely not mimicking North America. Shops are tiny, and in the front rooms of houses on the street, and on motorized and pedal powered carts, and in mercado's (farmer's markets). The portable shops are on every street corner and in between. To shop for groceries, most people only need to go down the street a few steps to get their food from their neighbors at a fraction of the cost of the supermarket at the mall. Actually, as I think about it, maybe the mall is not representative of a parallel economy but an anomoly.
The Majorista is a large market area that has much more than food and is worthy of a separate entry. Hermalinda is bigger yet and is where all the vendors go to purchase supplies in crates. We have not been there yet, but are planning to go tomorrow with a senior Peruvian missionarie couple who live in the apt next to us.
Peter
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