Thin Air

Street Vendors

Posted by Colin Putney on May 19, 2004

You can buy nearly anything from street vendors in Quito. Phone cards, sunglasses, CDs and DVDs, bananas, corn, limes or chochos. Just about anything you can carry easily. One time I passed a man standing next to an old-fashioned drugstore scale - 5 cents to weigh your self.

Walking home from the grocery store this afternoon, I passed a man selling record players on the street. And not the kind of thing you would use to spin a party, either. No, these were genuine immitation Victrolas - wooden boxes with turn-tables on top and great big horns attached by complicated plumbing.

I declined to buy one.

Posted in ecuador