R + D | South America

Pots, pans, baby clothes, Nivea cream, enough cheap leather shoes to be-shoe every barefoot man on earth, friendly vendors with carts specially designed to peel and squeeze delicious oranges for a $.20 cup of juice heaven, hair curlers, WWF playing cards, backpacks, screws, belts, notebooks with ¨Brat Pitt¨ on the cover,  the sweet sickening smell of roast pork, nail clippers, Lee jeans, sunglasses, pens, Gillette Mach 3 razor blades for less than $1 a piece (wish I didn´t have a beard), t-shirt dying ink, bananas, people everywhere, glasses of brownish colored beverage with a nut? fig? inside always covered with a saucer, flashlights, socks, brooms, underwear, DVDs!, more DVDs!, y mas DVDs! all blatantly copied, the smell of urine everywhere, leather boots, plumbing pipes, batteries, bras, super-glue, aspirin, marbles, light bulbs, puppets, squeaky whistles that sound like real birds and make you look up in anticipation of seeing a parrot only to see a man smiling with a whistle in his mouth and ten more hanging from his arms, skirts, hats, onions, Levi jeans, electrical tape, diapers, razors, tiger balm, milk of magnesia (not for Gringos, you can just use tap water, a remarkable laxative), rope, balloons, spices,  napkins, big beach balls with spikes (¿por que why?), tupperware, toilet paper, carrots, stray dogs running beneath the stalls (the source of the urine smell?), as the day wears on ladies coming around with tea and coffee for all the vendors, ahhhh! another cup of freshly squeezed o.j., sweaters, blankets, paint, ¨compro oro¨ (I buy gold), combs, cassette tapes, wool, herbs, raw meat, razors, potatoes, my little pony dolls, camera film, hand bags, jewelry,  school books, wallets, i.d. card holders, in every stall a campesina (indigenous rural lady folk) with her baby hidden amongst all the wares sometimes breast feeding sometimes asleep . . . everything on earth is for sale, you never know if it´s ¨original¨ or a knock-off and where the hell is all this stuff made? . . . China, no?