Our Favorite "Grocery Store"

To continue your tour of our neighborhood, we now show you our favorite grocery store here in Tarma: Comercial Alicia. It's located only three blocks from our home. Here we buy our fruit, vegetables, cheese, juices, laundry detergent, tissue paper, etc., and most importantly our large containers of bottled water.


Inside the store you will find cluttered shelves and piles of just about everything, crammed into a space about the size of our Orem living room. The old man in the picture here is father to María, the owner (María's sister Alicia, for whom the store was named, passed away last year):


After Scott took two or three pictures of the store, he was wondering how to ask the two women who run the store for their pictures. But then, María the owner asked him to take her picture!


Scott was then able to take a picture of the other woman, also named María, who helps run the store:


These two Marias are so helpful. If they don't have something we need, they send a helper to go get it at another market. If the vegetables out front don't look so great, they volunteer to check their produce in the back for something better. If we don't know the Spanish name for something, they play 20 Questions until they figure out what we want.

Today we bought an onion, four Roma tomatoes, two large red bell peppers, and two packages of (chicken) ham. The total price: US$1.3o. As Scott says---the food in Tarma is nearly free.