10/15/11 Oh the Things You Will See at the Saturday San Ignacio Market!

just one small area of the market

Well Aaron must have sensed that we need to be up early because he woke me up at 5:30am (he had to use the bathroom)! I sent him back to bed hoping he’d go back to sleep since it was still dark outside, but at 6am he appeared again, telling me that he’d been laying in his bed for a “long long time” and could he get up now? I let him play quietly in the front room hoping J would stay asleep, but he was awake not 20 min later. Kris got up with them and let me sleep a bit longer. We were in the car heading toward the market at 8am. 

Buying Shrimp

The market was huge! We had to park clear back by the bridge and walk up a small hill. There were at least 6 times as many booths today as there were on Thursday. This time there were many booths selling fruits and veggies, a couple more meat booths (people with ice chests full of meat), booths selling food to eat (some set up with seating areas to eat), booths with kitchen supplies, jewelry, clothes, shoes (lots of super cute strappy sandals, but not very practical for our adventure)… booths full of music cd’s and a movie booth too. Since it had rained so much over the last two days and the market is held in a dirt parking lot, things were very muddy. The boys enjoyed walking through the puddles. We saw some really weird fruits and veggies. I asked about them, but I was without my trusty notebook and the names were so unique that I can’t remember them. I snagged a picture of one weird thing that I think is part of the squash family. There was also a seafood section today. Men and women with their ice chests full of the day’s catch- Kris and Jonathan checked it out and saw crabs, lobster tails($8US each), shrimp, grouper, even a barracuda that Jonathan said was “This =insert him holding his arms out as far as possible here= big Mommy!” There were people everywhere! Of all types too. We saw some Mennonites selling cheese, yogurt, and chickens. Jonathan really wanted us to get a live chicken and was shocked when we told him that some people will use the chickens for eggs and others will kill them and eat their meat. We meandered through all the booths asking prices and then started purchasing. Today we bought 4 pounds of ground beef at $2US/lb, 5lbs of shrimp at $5/lb, a steal on pineapple 3 for $5, 2 pounds of yellow onion@.75US/lb, bananas 10 for 0.50US, pumpkin seeds- $2US for a quart sized bag (Kris likes to snack on these), green bell peppers 2lbs at $1.50US/lb, green beans 1lb for 0.50US, 4 pounds of potatoes@0.50US/lb., 3 heads of garlic for .88US. We also bought 3 movies- Fly Wheel, The 5^th Quarter, and Up, for $2US each.. and on our way out we grabbed a mixing bowl for $4US. All said and done we spent $55.88US at the market today and our bags were filled to the brim!

Distant cousin to the squash family??

We’ve met some interesting people at the market. The man we buy our meat from (I can’t remember his name either… ) used to be a pastor in Nicaragua and now is a pastor here in Belize, in a small village nearby. He speaks English very well and Kris spoke with him for a long time. He told us that when the weather is good the market is even bigger with more people and more vendors. It rained on us a little bit while at the market and the boys thought it was fun to walk in the rain. We also met John, from Canada. He and his girlfriend flew from Canada in to Mexico City and are hitch-hiking to Costa Rica! They’ve taken a few tours to the Mayan Ruins here in San Ignacio and said they are fantastic! They paid to go with an adventure touring company and it was pretty expensive, and we’re going to see what we can accomplish on our own. 

Our Farmer's Market Finds!

After the market came lunch and then rest time. The boys didn’t sleep today but I snagged a nap for a couple hours which felt great! Kris let the boys watch “Up” which they enjoyed and they spent the rest of the evening running around pretending to be Kevin. It was sooo cute!

We used the rest of our steak to make fajitas again. Ruth brought us a big bowl of vegetable beef soup that she made and I think we’ll have it for lunch tomorrow. They also stopped in this afternoon and asked if we liked tamales, which we really do. Every Saturday they travel to Benque which is near the Belize/Guatemala border. Abel said they are a $1BZ each, so Kris gave him $20 and asked for 20 tamales. After dinner they returned with the tamales and Kris couldn’t resist tasting them. Earlier in the week Ruth had given us 4 tamales that were wrapped in corn husks and filled with a cornmeal mush,  they were soooo good. These tamales were wrapped in banana leaves and filled with shredded pork, beans, and cornmeal mush-also very good! We kept a couple in the fridge and froze the rest.