El Mercado Dominicana
This morning broke with tropical rains, which, of course, led to late sleeping. After a breakfast of queso blanco, toast, mountain coffee and orange juice, we decided to check out a Dominican open air market across town. As a reference, the Dominican Republic shares the island of Hispaniola with Haiti, where Haiti occupies the western third of the island and the Dominican Republic has the other two-thirds. There is a vibrant Dominican population in Puerto Rico – there are pockets of Dominican culture everywhere and I have enjoyed meeting many Dominicans in the course of flying back and forth to the DR.
Our reason for going to the market was to score about a dozen eggplants. There were several fruit and vegetable stands in the market, but we liked this one the best. The goods were fresh and ripe, and I was in culinary heaven as we picked through the offerings on display.
This very attractive young woman appears to be buying some eggplant from the Dominican vendor. She bears a striking resemblance to my girlfriend… in fact, I am reasonably sure that this is her because I recognize the purse. It has my cell phone inside.
Ripe plantains and bananas hang above carrots and ginger. If you want to buy plantains the man hands you a small machete and you chop off the ones that you want. Its a fun way to shop – I wish we had machetes in our grocery stores back home.
This is our Dominican friend, who was actually very happy that I was taking shots of his stand. My spanish is still very poor, so I wasn’t able to speak with him very much, but I was flattered when he thanked me and offered a few oranges in the trade.
Believe me, we were living large after we got home with our goods. This stuff was truly awesome.
Fresh sugarcane and a pile of fruit, some of which I’m unfamiliar with. We had an awesome time here, and I look forward to going back. Those oranges were really good, and I have a few photos to drop off to my produce man.
Windward Journey 