Fruits and Vegetables/ Ciudad Vieja

When you are looking for produce in the Port area you are not near the grand shopping palaces you visit in the United States. Groceries in the U.S. display well groomed produce as you walk down waxed shiny floors,choose fruit and vegetables from clean bins with sprinklers that mist to make sure the product always looks fresh.There are plastic bags to wrap your choices and stocked product is carefully unpacked from boxes and inspected with blemished items thrown out. You would never suspect vegetables came out of the dirt, or fruits came off trees from the way they are lovingly presented. In Montevideo, around the Port, there are small fruit and produce stands on the streets. Tourists and residents buy out of these wooden boxes under tarps that protect from too much sun and rain. Uruguay is famous for wines and beef production, and has one of the world’s largest underground aquifers, but citrus, fruits, and other vegetables are shipped in from Central America, South America and beyond. This stand has basics – cucumbers, tomatoes, onions, chili’s, lettuce, potatoes. There is something comforting about buying bananas, apples, carrots and lettuce out of beaten up, chipped, scarred wooden boxes. The beauty is you only have to walk a block to buy what you need. I’ve been told that you should, in foreign places, eat only things you can peel so I’m careful about my purchases. Time, that moves too fast the older you get, slows to a more comfortable clip when you have to walk to do your shopping.