Supernatural Shopping: The Witches Market of La Paz
IT HAPPENS ALL THE TIME: You find yourself stuck in a foreign country, unable to find a dried llama fetus. Well, you won’t have that problem in La Paz, Bolivia.
The daily Witches Market (Mercado de Hechicería) in central La Paz is the place to go for all your mystical needs. Around the corner from hostel-filled Calle Sagarnaga, the stalls along Calle Linares sell a variety of charms, home remedies, Pacha Mama (Earth Mother) figurines, and love potions as well as the gruesome llama fetuses (which are traditionally buried at the site of new building). If you speak Spanish, you can also consult a bruja (witch), who will tell your fortune by reading your palm or coca leaves.
The market also has more conventional souvenirs, including traditional crafts and garments made from alpaca wool. But there are also magicians of a more modern breed—i.e., cell-phone renters, identifiable by their bright yellow jackets. When calling to your Mom or your hometown bruja, expect the phone’s owner to hang onto a chain attached to the phone, meaning your call won’t be very private!
The Witches Market occasionally features another fantastical sight, the elusive Bolivian zebras. To help those Sunday-morning crowds stocking up on magical powders, the city council has hired people wearing zebra suits to stop the notoriously dense traffic so that pedestrians can safely cross the road.
by Aidan Doyle
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Oh Baby, I Like It Raw! Tokyo's Tsukiji Fish Market
THE GREATEST FISH MARKET IN JAPAN, and perhaps the world, Tsukiji is a dense grid of paved walkways packed corner to corner with everything in aquatic cuisine. All around is glistening pink-and-silver fish flesh, laid out on ice, labeled with no-nonsense tags and mulled over by restaurateurs and housewives alike as they squeeze through the narrow aisles. With the vendors’ awnings nearly touching, it’s like a long, scaly tunnel of fish.
Traditional tourist sights are a little thin, but if you’re coming to Tsukiji, it is to see, and taste, the center of seafood commerce. The locals may betray some amusement at spotting a tourist here, but the vendors are flattered to have you photograph them and their buckets of 50-yen fish heads (just ask, “Shashin o totte mo ii desu ka?”). A lot of the butchery is done right in front of the shops—large tuna dangle from great hooks, awaiting their turn on the chopping block—so feel free to stand and gawk for a while. While you’re at it, take a deep breath. Things move so fast from boat to bin to bought that no ill smells accumulate.
Sandwiched among all the butchers and vendors and warehouses are the sushi restaurants. For best results, visit in the late morning, when the first catches have just come in. Most establishments (like Sushizanmai) offer a hearty fifteen-piece, alive-five-minutes-ago variety platter that will run you about 3,000 yen ($30). Well worth it—you’ll be getting the best sushi on the planet.
Matt Dujnic
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Mexican Mystery Meat: Oaxaca's Sunday Barbecue
MARKETS HOLD A NEAR SACRED PLACE in the lives of most Oaxacans, and Tlacolula’s open-air Sunday market—a 19-mile jaunt out of the city—will show you why.
One of the oldest in Mesoamerica, the bazaar is a rambling affair of tarps and lean-tos spread around the base of the 16th-century church, the Capilla del Santo Cristo, full of wooden sculptures of beheaded martyrs. Wandering through the stalls—with goods ranging from pyramids of candy-colored plastic pails to traditional hand-woven shawls— will build an appetite for Tlacolula’s famed barbacoa de chivo (barbecued goat). The 30-plus stands form a tight grid of narrow walkways within the market, and each boasts its own delicacy with a coal-heated pot simmering meat in a deep-red tomato broth. Portly women in ruffled aprons beam as you pass through, urging you with subtle, motherly gestures to try their meals. Eyeing the stew and other customers is your best bet for making a delicious, and safe, culinary choice. Sit down at a long communal table, and bowls of crisp barbacoa will soon arrive, accompanied by fresh tortillas, cabbage, radishes, cilantro, and lime. With hunks simmering mystery stew and ubiquitous flies buzzing around, it’s not a lunch for the faint of heart or stomach. But for only three bucks, it’s nearly a religious experience.
by Amarina Kealoha
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