Tarabuco Market (20.07.08)

Tarabuco is a small indigenous village about 65km (or a 1.5 hour bus ride) from Sucre. Every Sunday they hold a market which sells lots of colourful weavings, lama wool gloves, beannies and scarves and ponchos in any colour or pattern you can imagine. Tourist buses offload hordes of tourists (including us) who invade the town, buying up souvenirs by the armfulls, and then jump back on the buses at 1.30pm never to return again.

Our first stop was to find breakfast as no where was open back in Sucre before 8.30am. In fact, many restaurants and virtually no shops open on Sundays in this part of the world. The only people who seem to work on the Sabbath are beggars and everyone in the village of Tarabuco.

After fuelling up we set off to scope out the wares on offer. I am trying really hard not to buy anything just yet as I will have to lug it around for the next few months. Therefore, we only bought two beanies, one pair of gloves, 7 postcards and a traditional hat to add to my collection of ethnic costumes (I need Emily to have another big bash and this time I will come as a Bolivian). We also had to purchase some photographs of locals. No one posed willingly, so most snaps were taken surrepticiously on the street corner. However, some enterprising locals offered to pose for cash when it became apparent we weren't going to buy their weavings they were trying to flog to us. So, all the close up shots above or where people are actually looking at the camera were bought, often for double the original price as Jon also wanted to take pics to and therefore they demanded money from him as well.

I loved the fact that all the locals here were wearing their traditional clothes and beaded hats. It made for a very colourful scene. Another interesting thing about this place is that it has the most disgusting statue I have ever seen in the main plaza. It depicts a Bolivian man ripping the bleeding heart out of a Spanish soldier and holding it above his head. It is really gruesome. I took a photo of it but forgot to upload it.