Polleria Zaragoza, Insurgentes, San MIguel
The real name is the Polleria Zaragoza, but it is known locally as the Polleria Con Permisso, which, roughly translated, means the “Excuse Me Chicken Shop”. Just to add to the confusion, it sells mainly vegetables and fruit. At about four meters (13 feet) square, and being the place where most hotels and restaurants, and all the housemaids, buy their ingredients, it is about the most crowded place in San Miguel. At that size there is nowhere to store anything, so a fleet of quadrimotos (four-wheeled motorcycle thingies) ply back and forth all day long bringing in everything fresh from the fields. There were 26 people in the store when I took this picture, all muttering “con permisso”, “con permisso” as they squeezed past each other and stepped gingerly over the clutter of bags of potatoes and beans on the floor. I was in the corner by the pineapples so had to stop taking pictures to pass some hand-to-hand overhead whenever they were needed. And the cost of all this? About a quarter of what we pay for often pale unripe stuff in the US, and, it’s right at the end of our street. They do also sell a few chickens.