The Loja Sunday market

The market, which takes over a large proportion of the town on a Sunday morning, is definitely where you see Loja at its best. I love to pop down there of a Sunday morning to see lovely old indigenous ladies sat in huddles shelling peas, piles and piles of every exotic fruit and vegetable that you could care to imagine, and people shouting off about their toilet paper, fresh honey, parsley, potatoes, sugar cane juice and everything in between.

Of course, bartering is expected, and any attempts I make at it instantly mark me out as a gringo, but it's fun to try. The bottom picture of this post is how much fruit and veg I managed to buy with 5 dollars, so my bargaining skills must be improving (in my first week here I was duped into buying a small bunch of grapes for 2 dollars).