The expansive market I visited on Sunday, named Tristan Narvaja for the main thoroughfare the miscellaneous wares are sprawled out on, made Plaza Matriz look like K-mart.
At the entrance, I was greeted with an array of live animals for sale. At first it was mostly fish with some lizards and frogs, nothing too crazy until I saw small glass containers each with one palm-sized tarantula crawling around inside. Quickly passing the spiders, I moved on to the live poultry section in which wire cages were stacked and each stuffed with a different kind of bird ranging from chickens and geese to parrots and pigeons. The cute and cuddly section was last with tiny puppies, kittens, hamsters and other furry things. These were also spread all over the fair and it was uncommon to see a t-shirt vendor who also had bunnies for sale or a guy with scrappy little dogs crawling all over each other in the basket of his bicycle.
Beyond the petting zoo, this market had everything, and I really, actually think it was everything (except peanut butter to my dismay). This is just a small sampling of the stuff I saw there – bunk beds, toilet seats, keyboards, samurai swords, naked baby dolls, old burned and dubbed DVDs, prescription glasses, eggs, false teeth, ceiling fan blades, a big plastic hand with the middle finger sticking up, toothbrushes, giant squash, sexy nurse lingerie, lamps, giant painted glass bottles and also some regular old glass jars and bottles, herbs and spices, booze, etc.
This stuff, including parts of mannequins (sex dolls) was laid out on the street right in front of a junkyard. This, and a lot of other crap I saw, makes me think that some of the vendors are dumpster divers and make their living selling back to us all the stuff we throw away.
If I were living here, I think I could have decorated an entire house with one trip to Tristan Narvaja. But I’m not and I can’t afford to fill up what little free space I have in my suitcase so early on in my trip, so I ate my way through TN. Oh yeah, and I bargained for a red Budweiser King of Beers fanny-pack.
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