Would You Eat It?

Today was pretty uneventful with the exception of a trip to the third major market in Santa Cruz.  The trip was necessary, because Lukas, Ruddy and Yimy (pronounced Jimmy) all needed new shoes, and we are still looking for a Bolivian guitar with a neck small enough for Lukas' hand to fit around.  This market is where there is a fair bit of shoes, fruit stands, the usual electronics and wood furniture.  This one isn't so much a huge building with stalls like the main market, but is more made out of suspended tarps dividing each store and is a real maze.

There were some really interesting things at this market that I hadn't seen at the other ones as of yet including this little gem.

 

The first question is:  Would you eat it?

To give you a description, it is called Pacay and is once again, a strange fruit.  It grows on trees and hangs like a long seed pod which is exactly what it is.  You split it open like a pea pod, and inside are a bunch of hard black seeds covered in what looks and feels exactly like white fur.  Now, who can guess which part you eat????  That's right little Billy, you get a lollipop.  You eat the white fur.  If you can get past the way it feels in your mouth, it tastes very much like a slightly green banana.  There isn't much fur on each seed, so its a little labor intensive but worth the experience.  They are also dirt cheap at 4 pods for 5 Bolivianos or roughly 75 cents.  To give perspective, each pod is about the size of a cucumber and the seeds are the size of a quarter.

After trying the Pacay, we continued on our search for shoes and were lucky enough to find a pair for Lukas and a pair for Ruddy but Yimy was not able to find exactly what he wanted.  Its amazing to see how cheap some of the brand names we buy back home are here.  A new pair of sketchers for me costs $45 to $50 without being on sale.  These are the real deal, not knock offs.  You can tell because they are behind glass instead of piled on a mound of other shoes or just sitting on a shelf.

There were lots of other foods being cooked and prepared which were recognizable and smelled decent but I steered clear of due to concerns over my health.  If it would have been in a restaurant, I would have tried several of the "pork parts" dishes that were available.  There was fried pig skin, dried llama (with the leg still attached), beef tripe and lots of different chicken parts.  We did break down and buy some candy which was basically sugar balls dyed pink.  We didn't know that we were not supposed to eat them until after we had finished a bunch off.  Yimy explained that those candies, although edible, are meant to be thrown into a fire and burned for Mother Earth.  Oops.

Tomorrow is a full day of teaching for Melody and a full day of computer fixing for me and Lukas.  Jordan and Logan will be hanging out with the Bolivian kids in the daycare for most of the day.

Since some of you may be getting bored with my style, I am going to have special guest writers this week and let Melody and Lukas put up a post or two, so you get their opinion on things.