I thought I’d be a bit different for this ‘Fresh’ challenge. I do have pics of fresh fruit and veg, as well as delicious looking drinks, but what about really fresh meat?
It doesn’t come much fresher than this poor guinea pig in a market in Ecuador.
These fat ones were still happily running around in their pen, waiting to be chosen for the barbecue.
This one’s luck had just run out. 😦
To see more entries for the ‘Fresh’ challenge, just click here.
The weekly photo challenge, “Foreign,” shouldn’t really have been much of a challenge to me, as just about all of my travel photos are taken in countries which are foreign to me. The question was, “which ones would I choose?”
I decided that I would select a few that show the different modes of transport which have been very foreign to me.
I wonder if you can guess what animal I was riding on in Zimbabwe? It was very large and grey, and had the trunk up front, unlike my Jeep here in the USA. 🙂
This one is pretty obvious, and although it looks quite low to the ground, when he unbent those long legs of his, I was riding HIGH!!
Here we have an even more scary way of travelling. I intended sitting safely inside, but intrepid hubby insisted on sitting aloft, so that he could get better photos of the passing landscape as we travelled on a section of the Trans-Andean railway in Ecuador, supposedly one the most spectacular train rides in the world.
A more sedate way of getting from A to B, is this bicycle driven rickshaw, which took me around the Hutons of Beijing. 🙂
Here was one ride that I really enjoyed, speeding across Lake Titicaca in a hydrofoil.
Sailing down the khlongs in Bangkok, was a very interesting if sometimes quite aromatic experience. 🙂
Of course I’m really used to motor car travel, but not usually quite like this. Once in a while, it’s good to spoil oneself, I guess.
For more posts on this theme, just click here.
“There is no sincerer love, than the love of food.” ~ George Bernard Shaw.
On my travels, I’ve eaten some wonderful meals and blogged quite a few of them already, so for Ailsa’s travel food challenge, I thought I’d just concentrate on shopping for the ingredients needed to make meals in different countries.
Of course unless you’re a vegetarian, you’ll be needing some meat, so we’ll go to Peru for a nice bit of guinea pig. Feel free to choose the plumpest one that takes your fancy.
Or how about a nice succulent chicken from The Medina in Morocco?
or a few tasty slices of Wild Boar, sold on the street in the beautiful medieval town of San Gimignano in Tuscany?
Now we have the meat sorted, we’ll move on to the vegetables, starting off with a wonderful choice of corn at a market in Peru, on the road from Cusco to Machu Picchu.
Healthy, fresh veggies can also be found at this market in Cuenco in the highlands of Ecuador.
In the hills just outside Marrakech, you will find a vegetable market frequented by the locals, so the prices may be more reasonable than those closer to the city.
As you can see, it’s not too busy, so you may probably be able to negotiate a good price with these guys.
Here at the Medina at Fes, is the most amazing selection of nuts, dates and dried fruit.
Then for a delicious dessert, we can travel back to San Gimignano to the famous “Gelateria di Piazza” in the Piazza della Cisterna. Sergio is the master ice cream maker there, and his ice cream parlour is mentioned in the most important world guides. This small shop with all its tempting choices, is continuously visited by national and international celebrities and television crews; but be prepared to take a number, and stand in line for quite a while.
“Part of the secret of a success in life is to eat what you like and let the food fight it out inside.” Mark Twain
I see that there’s a Travel Challenge this week. The theme is “Street Markets,” of which I’ve visited many on my travels.
Usually I can spend a good deal of time browsing around at all the goods on display, but this one, in La Paz, Bolivia, was so gruesome, that we only stopped long enough to take a photo, before hurrying away. La Paz has a population of over a million people, and at face value, it looks much like any other bustling city, with its high rise buildings, shops and restaurants, but when we stepped into this side street, we came upon El Mercado de las Brujas, which is Spanish for ‘The Witches’ Market’. Witches wearing dark dresses and hats, sell a bizarre assortment of goods there, and one can buy all manner of things, such as dried frogs, which are supposed to bring you wealth, ceramic naked couples to improve your sex life and fertility, Bolivian armadillos which are to put over your door to keep the thieves away, and most bizarre of all, dried llama fetuses, which 99% of Bolivian families are said to put in the foundations of their houses to bring good luck. This was one market which didn’t tempt us to buy souvenirs. 😉
This fruit and vegetable market just outside Cusco in Peru, was very interesting indeed. I saw all manner of fruit and veggies that you don’t get in our shops. Our guide told us that there are 4,000 types of potatoes in South America. We didn’t see that many, but certainly saw quite a lot that we didn’t recognise.
(pic from Google)
Peruvian farmers grow more than 55 varieties of corn, more than anywhere else on earth.This woman had some in every colour: white, yellow, purple, black, red and mixed.
We also found a stall selling many different natural dyes. The Andeans love their brightly coloured fabrics. The favourite colour is red, and the female cochineal beetle, to be found on the prickly pear cactus, is dried and ground down, to be used in the production of red dye. The other dyes are mostly vegetable, made from flowers, moss, tree bark and nut shells etc..
In Quito, Ecuador, we were surprised and horrified to see live guinea pigs for sale in the market, by the sackful!
Gualaceo, about 45 minutes’ drive from Cuenca, is a very traditional town, and here we came upon this 25th of July Market (Mercado 25 de Junio). At the doorway to the market, we saw a woman selling what appeared to be ‘fast food’.
On closer inspection, this is what we saw! It was roast guinea pig and corn take-away!!
Neither hubby nor myself could be persuaded to sample it, even though, I believe it is very low in cholesterol. 😉 I suppose it’s just our Western upbringing which makes us shy away from eating anything cute and cuddly, especially the kids’ household pets. Inside, there were some succulent looking roast pigs on display,
which I might have sampled, except for the fact that we were going out for a really slap-up restaurant meal that evening. We were again offered guinea pig, but opted for something less traditional. For the life of me, I can’t remember what we ate, but it certainly wasn’t anything remotely huggable. 😉
Well, that’s enough pics of South American markets to be going on with. If you want to see what markets other bloggers have been to, just click here.
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