Fish Market

The Stake Center we went to on Tuesday night was right next door to the big Bahia, or Fish Market. We have heard lots of good things about this market and how you can get 25 crabs for $5 and lots of other great deals. So, since nobody came to the informational meeting, the workshop was canceled for the week and Johnny took us next door for a vital Guayaquil experience.
The market was bustling, cars coming and going constantly and once you walk through the gates you are in a madhouse. A fantastic, entertaining place that makes you smile from all the excitement, but a madhouse nonetheless. And once again when I say you I mean I. So, you walk into the market and your nose is assaulted by the very strong smell of raw, dead fish. The floor has drains throughout the entire market but they can never seem to catch up and so a layer of water covers the cement floor. You are wearing flat white shoes with a white skirt made with lots of swishy material and so you step carefully and hold your skirt in so it doesn't brush against wet buckets of fish or men who are covered in fish guts. Speaking of fish guts, those drains are filled with them, all at different stages of decomposition. Guts, bones, fish heads... some with a steady stream of red bloody water, originating at the chopping blocks. You are much more worried about your white flat shoes after seeing the streams of blood. But, back to the chopping blocks. The chopping blocks are huge surfaces made of tile, I imagine they are extremely unsanitary as they always have fish being chopped on them and as the fish are chopped they are doused with buckets of water to wash off the blood. Behind the chopping blocks are men with big fishing boots up to their knees or higher, with a machete in hand. They are very skilled and slice up the fish faster and more accurately than you've ever seen in your life. Perhaps that's because you've never been to a fish market. Or actually seen someone use a machete. You are entertained. You can't wait to come back with a camera. You know words will never do this place justice. There you see fish that are 4 feet longs and wider around than you are. They also have huge catfish that are about 2 feet long that come from the river. You wander how they eat fish from the river. The river is always brown, with trash floating in it and you can't see past the surface. You silently vow never to eat catfish in Guayaquil. At the same time you vow to come back and buy some fish from the sea. You just saw a man buy an entire bucket of fish for $10. You really like corvina and think it would be a good experience to have to cut the head off yourself and then gut it. For some reason unpleasant things in foreign countries are amusing to you and some of the unpleasant factor is taken away. You also know you have to buy cangrejos (crab). They come in bundles of about 25 and are tied together, still alive. Apparently the only way to buy them is alive. You have to kill them yourself. You don't know about that one. Cutting off the head of an already dead fish is one thing but killing a crab... that's murder. Well okay, not really. But still, you don't like killing things that are larger than a spider. But cangrejos are still a must, after all they're grown in trees around here. Seriously. Once you were driving down the road and Hermano Gomez pointed at some manglares (mangrove) trees and say that those woods are protected because they grow cangrejos. The word in Spanish for grow and raise are the same and so you laugh silently at the thought of growing crabs in trees. In reality, it is a swampy area and the crabs live in the muddy muck. You don't go a day in Guayaquil without someone talking about cangrejos. You think it should be the city's mascot.
Well, anyway that's about all there is to say about the fish market. Pictures and videos will come in the not too distant future. We're going to eat cangrejos at Johnny's house next weekend, it will be my first time to eat crab. I'm excited. We have to learn how to prepare it so we can do it in our house. Bottom line, the fish market was awesome. Ranked right up there with the Iguana Park. Speaking of iguanas, I saw iguana road kill the other day. No joke. I was intrigued. So here in Guayaquil they grow crabs in trees and hit iguanas with cars. Welcome to the strange city in which I live.