Living in Puerto Lopez: Shopping

One of our keys to successful living in Puerto Lopez is learning where to shop and what the limitations are on products here.  Most of what we shop for on a daily basis, as expected, is food.  Let's start by looking at non-food items first.

As I mentioned in the previous post, there are specialty shops for non-consumables.  A couple of these are:

• The ferriterias: These are the hardware stores that generally concentrate on a single category of items.  I mentioned a few in the previous post, but there are other ferriterias that cater to specific vertical markets.  This one, Chino Godoy, specializes primarily in tires and PVC products:

• Street vendors:  I'm not counting the beach vendors here that sell blankets and jewelry; they pretty much walk the Malecon and beach, targeting tourists.  The vendors that I'm thinking of are the ones that walk all over town trying to sell a specific item, almost like a door-to-door vacuum salesperson from the 1960's.  I saw a young guy on Sunday (~20 years old?) walking the back streets trying to sell bicycle kickstands.  I can't imagine that he sells many of them or that his margins are that high, but I wish him all the best!
• Household items:  TIA is the "big" department store in town, selling groceries, clothes and household goods.  Additionally, there are two stores that sell plastic items - everything from storage totes to salt-and-pepper shakers.  The larger of these is located on the west side of RDS at the very southern end of town.
• Utilities:  Probably the two most necessary items in any household are water and propane.  Most tiendas sell 20-liter bottles of purified water for $1.00 each:

(Oops!  I had to slide in a picture of Luna waiting for the new water bottle to be installed.  Gratuitous, I know!)  This picture shows a rack of bottled water outside of Villao (note the brooms on the left side of the store)

:

AgipGas, located just south of the bridge on the east side of RDS, sells the ubiquitous yellow bottles of propane for $1.60 each.  (That's for a refill with deposit; a new tank costs between $50 and $60).

I wasn't sure how to describe the grocery vendors, so I decided to start with the small ones and work my way up.

Almost every street corner has a local tienda.  Usually no bigger than a single-car garage, it's a place where you can make an emergency trip for milk, diapers and (maybe) ice cream.  The prices are usually a little high, but you can't beat the convenience.

There are a few (what I call) super-tiendas in town.  Xavico's and Villao fall into this category.  They both sell groceries as well as personal products (soap, deodorant, etc.).  Villao is easy to identify because of the large display of brooms out front whenever they are open.

The big gorilla of stores in town is TIA (Tiendes Industriales Asociados).  Like a traditional department store, they have sections for groceries, clothing, cleaning supplies, some hardware/automotive, place settings and cookware.

One of the things that I find interesting about TIA are the promotions that they run - buy something, get something else free!  Some of these make sense -  buy a six-pack of beer; get a free mug:

or buy a package of sliced ham...

...and get a free hot dog!  (Maybe it's a sausage or salchicha.  I don't know - not interested.)

Some, though, I just don't understand.  Buy a four-pack of toilet paper and get a free dinner plate?  Cause and effect, I guess.

My favorite place to shop, however, is the mercado.  The food is fresh, much of it is grown or raised locally, and it's GMO free.  Here's an overview of the layout.  (Please forgive the crudity of this model; it's not to scale and I didn't have time to paint it.)

Food Court:  On any given day, there are up to six booths open selling almuerzo (lunch) for around $3.00.  It includes fish (sometimes chicken), salad, rice and a glass of juice.

Fruit:  Most of the fruit is familiar to what I had in the States.  Some new ones, like maracuya and guanabana, are fun to discover and experiment with.  Here are a few looks at the fruit vendors down the central corridor of the market:

A look down the meat (carne) aisle:

Our favorite meat vendor, Oscar, is located at the far end of this aisle on the right.  He grinds hamburger fresh for $2.50 - $3.00/lb.  His price depends on his mood, I think; we've been going to him long enough that we don't get "Gringo'd" anymore.  (If he tries, he knows that we'll usually leave and come back a different day.)

Both vegetables aisles look pretty much the same.  We have two different guys that we go to; it depends on whether we're looking for "stock" vegetables (carrots, peppers, etc.) or flavorings (cilantro, parsley, and the like).

I can't leave out the fish and shellfish guys!

Here are our shopping results from a couple of different days.  A bag of "peanut butter" (it actually just contains pureed peanuts - no butter or salt added) for $1.00/lb:

Vegetables for beef stew (about $1.00, I think):

Thirteen pounds of Porter House steaks from Oscar ($39.00 at $3.00/lb):

Fruit! (A few peppers thrown in as well.)  I don't recall the price, but it should have been about $3.00 minus the Jack Fruit (the big thing at the top); I don't remember what the price was on it.

A couple of suggestions when buying food from the market:

• Once it's home, scrub off any loose dirt and wash them after that.  There are "professional" fruit cleaning products (like Vitalin), but a quarter-cup of vinegar in a sink full of water also does the trick (like in the fruit picture above).  Soak for twenty minutes, dry off and put them in the fridge.
• The fish guys will clean and cut your fish however you like (filets or steaks) at no additional charge.  Most fish sold at the market was caught either that morning or during the previous night.
• Buy meat early in the day!  The beef and fish booths close at noon; chickens are sold until late afternoon.  The other motivation for this is that it sits (or hangs) in the open air during the day until it is sold and replaced with new product from the refrigerator.
• I've stopped buying cuts of beef (other than hamburger).  The beef is cut with the grain, not across it, and this creates a pretty tough steak.
• When buying fruits or vegetables, don't ask for "four potatoes" or "a dozen limes".  Instead, ask for "fifty cents of potatoes" or "ten cents of parsley".  The quantities will generally be larger and it's easier for the vendor to make a running tab of what he's selling.
• Unlike whole chickens at a store, chickens at the market don't come with all of the "parts" (innards, the head and the feet); they're sold separately.  Keep this in mind if you're making chicken stock after the chicken has been roasted.  (Whole chickens at the market are $1.00/lb and average about six pounds.)

Bon appetit!