To Market, To Market to Buy a Fat (guinea) Pig!

After returning from Machu Picchu, we would return for two more days in Cusco.  During our free time to ourselves, I chose to explore the market places.



San Pedro Market

This market has been featured on both Travel Channel shows  Bizarre Foods with Andrew Zimmern, and No Reservations with Tony Bourdain.

The market is mostly for the locals to do their grocery shopping.   About, the size of a football field, this open-air market sells mostly food items, with a few artisans booths sprinkled here and there for the tourists.  There are the typical fruits and vegetables that we know and love in North America.  There is also familiar cuts of meat such as beef, lamb, and pork.

And then there is the not so typical:  pigs heads, alpaca steaks, and cuy - which to you and I is the guinea pig!

 In North America, pigs heads were used to make head cheese.  Not a cheese at all, you can find head cheese in the deli section of any grocery store.  Oscar Mayer makes it.  A good understanding of head cheese can be found in the children's book Little House in the Big Woods by Laura Ingalls Wilder.  In one chapter she describes how her parents butcher a pig and what they did with all the meat, and this includes a section on how to make head cheese.  My great-grandfather was a butcher in Chicago, and my mother was subjected to all sorts of cuts of meat.  If she didn't like it as a child, she never fed it to her own children.  Suffice it to say, I have never tasted head cheese!

Alpaca - Alpacas and Llamas are part of the camel family.  Alpacas are typically bred for their wool or fiber, which is used in traditional weaving.  Llamas are the larger of the animals, and are bred for meat, and to be pack animals.  Having had camel meat on several occasions when I lived in Egypt, I was not adverse to trying alpaca or llama meat.

Cuy - having first seen this on the Travel channel, I was not about to try it.  I am not a picky eater, but there some limits.  Then again, when in Rome - or Cusco....... And, on my last night in Cusco, one of my fellow travelers did get brave and order cuy.  I wish I had had my camera!  You could just see it's little head with teeth, and curled up paws!  However, I did try a taste, and I liked it!

Please enjoy the pictures of the San Pedro Market :)

Fruit juice stalls.

Flower stalls

Corn stalls

Sign over the pork aisle.

Sign over the juice aisle.

Overall view of San Pedro.

Mercado de las Brujas - Cusco's Version of Diagon Alley!

Sixty percent of Peru's population is Roman Catholic - with a sprinkling of the ancient Incan religion thrown right in!  Adjacent to San Pedro Market is the Witches' Market, and it is fascinating!

Like the fictional Diagon Alley of Harry Potter fame, The Witches' Market has something for everyone.  So I will break it down with comparison's to Diagon Alley.

Madam Malkin's Robes for All Occasions - All around the perimeter of San Pedro are clothing stalls.
Flourish and Blotts  - In the Witches' Market, itself, I could find no books.  However, there are shaman shops all around the city, and many of them look like your average health food store in the U.S.  They have a selection of books. 
Apothecary - With potion ingredients galore, the Witches' Market carries a wide assortment of potion ingredients that could make Severus Snape salivate!  The list is long: herbs, herbal medicines, beginner spell kits, dried animals of every variety, potion ingredients, ready-made potions, amulets, charms, etc., etc. 
Eeylopes Owl Emporium - The closest thin to Eeylopes I could find was a women selling dried and live frogs and toads.  She would not allow me to photograph her stand (I always ask).
Ollivander's Wands - I did find these cool sticks with faces carved in them.  I don't think they are used as walking sticks!
Knockturn Alley - I couldn't find a Knockturn Alley equivalent, not that I was looking for one.
Friends of Madam Pomfrey- Shaman and Witch doctors are available to help a person with spells.  There are even the rare Sorcerers.  Only good white magic is practiced. No sectumsempra here!

The Witches' Market is mainly for the locals.  Here they buy spell supplies, Andean herbal medicine, and amulets for the Challas (Chay ahs), the important ceremonies that have survived from the Incan times.

These are llama fetuses, used in the building of new buildings.  The pictures is not rotated correctly, and I can't fix it on this computer.  Next to the dried fetuses are packets of love potions and other spell kits.

Masks for festivals - again, I can't rotate this picture.

I would love to know what these carved wood sticks are for. 

The frog lady would not let me take pictures of her dried and live frogs.  I went to the next aisle to get a photo of the cures that frogs can give a person.

Eventually, I will get these photos rotated.