Shopping in San Pedro
By Paul Lyons
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San Marcos and San Pedro are sister cities. The main squares of each city are perhaps two miles apart. While I much prefer San Marcos, the good stores and markets are in San Pedro - it is the city of commerce.
You can get between the two cities in a flash. In both cities are an abundance of taxicabs eager to take you to the next town. In San Marcos, at the main square, near the bus station and market, they line up, turn off their engines and wait for their next fare. As each cab is filled, the taxi drivers get out and push their taxis forward, closer to the front of the line. However, there is no reason to catch your cab at the main square for there is really but one main road between the two towns, and if you are on this road there is always a taxi going by. One always shares the taxi in Guatemala and the drivers pack people in as much as possible. Sometimes drivers will pack three people in the front, so you may be sitting on the gear shift. The fare between San Marcos and San Pedro is 2 Quetzal – about 30 cents.
One morning, I went out into San Marcos and tried to do some shopping. I could not find the things I was looking for, so I thought, time to go to San Pedro. In ten seconds I was in a cab with a few others. Luck would have it that it was Thursday, which was market day. Just off the main square are streets filled with locals selling produce, chickens, you name it. I ventured in and bought an expensive non-stick frying pan, a hat with the name of a famous soccer team, and found the location of a stall that sold fresh fish.
Besides fish she had shrimp and prawns. It did not smell fishy, which surprised me, so I bought a few pound of shrimp. She asked me how I was going to prepare them and I said that I have a nice dish with garlic, olive oil, cilantro and white wine, which is served over pasta. She asked if I could write the recipe down, which I attempted to do on a paper bag using drawings and icons more than Spanish. I then left to buy my fill of produce.
Tomatoes, one Quetzal. Cucumbers two Quetzales each. Onions, 2 Quetzales a pound. I was buying a bit from one Mayan woman, a bit from another. The area was getting pretty crowded. I was starting to get pushed around a bit, got a bunch of cilantro and tried to get out of that crowd. Twenty steps forward I looked down at my plastic bags full of stuff and released to my chagrin that I did not have the frying pan. Bummer. It was about fifteen dollars, quite a lot for this part of the world.
So I started to rationalize it. Fifteen dollars is half of a street cleaning ticket in San Francisco. It is just three beers in a bar. Three times across the Golden Gate Bridge - if you throw in a little gas. The person who lifted it off me in the crowd surely needs it more than me. It is just good that they did not get my wallet, which I had put in my front pocket. I retraced my steps thinking maybe I had dropped it, but it was nowhere to be found.
So I continued on my shopping. A bag of oranges, two cantalope for 5 cents. I was starting to get pretty loaded down with bags. Next time I would surely bring a real bag to carry this stuff in.
My last stop was another stall that sold hats. They were baseball hats and we needed them as the sun was beginning to take its tool. The hard part was finding one that was big enough. 25 Quetzales a hat. I told the woman selling it that los gringos tiene cabezas grande - "North Americans have big heads" which she found mildly amusing. So I kept trying them on and she handed me ones she thought would work. Finally, I found one that seemed to work. She said that for me it would be only 20 Quetzales because I had such big head. We had another laugh and I went on my way to catch a taxi back home to San Marcos.
As I was walking along I lamented the lost frying pan. The aluminum ones that came with the house were always a chore to clean. Then I had a thought. Maybe I left it with the woman who I bought the fish from. I must have put it down when I wrote out that recipe. So I headed back to her stall. Sure enough it was sitting on the table, next to her fish, exactly where I had left it.
I picked up the frying pan, the woman selling the fish nodded, and I headed back to catch a taxi. Getting home I looked over my haul - frying pan, shrimp, fruit and vegetables, hat. But where was that last hat specially made for the big-headed gringos that I got at a sale price? I must have dropped it somewhere on the way home.
3/26/2006
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