Los Hombres del Mercado

There is a huge clothes market near our campsite. Apparently, these clothes were intended to be donations to Bolivia but somehow end up for sale on the street. The storefronts range from clothes piled up on the road to tiny stalls where a few articles can be hung up for show. Of course, you can also buy all the usual market stuff too – dried llama fetuses, giant bags of peanuts, etc.

Some of the clothes are brand new with the manufacturers tags still attached. Others are obviously Goodwill donations (with tags) or were rejected somewhere along the line (JC Penny, we see your tags too.) Apparently the clothes come in large shipments and each weekend the enterprising locals have managed some sort of system to get these to the street vendors.

Some of the vendors specialize in a particular type of clothing, though many seem to get the raw end of the deal, selling only old belts or used flip flops.

Our first attempt at visiting the market was a complete failure. It was overwhelming, and really you needed to sort through piles and piles of clothing for hours. But, there is some good stuff in there. Name brand high-quality snow gear can be found if you really search.

So, we returned with a plan–we needed cold weather gear and we would concentrate on that.

Though we were fairly successful in finding some winter clothes, we quickly became more interested in the mannequins. These must have been donated as well… from a Halloween store.

4 thoughts on “Los Hombres del Mercado

  • June 23, 2011 at 7:35 AM
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    You have just entered the twilight zone!

  • June 23, 2011 at 10:59 AM
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    los hombres son guapos. especially the pirate ; )

  • June 24, 2011 at 8:46 AM
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    This was the funniest post to date. I laughed out loud with almost every picture.

    Thanks for sharing your awesome adventure. I tell everyone I can about Bodeswell.org

    Be safe!

    Scott Black
    N. Las Vegas

  • June 28, 2011 at 4:49 PM
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    Some member of the Mildenberger family is in huge trouble!

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