Matatlan's Shrimp Ladies

Tuesday p.m.


Yowee!!!! Turned on my laptop and it said “NO INTERNET CONNECTION” WHAT!?!?! All the lights are on the modem, the dish is up. Sweat pouring off. The Driver says “I’ll fix it.” Yah Sure – I look over and he is on line……It was just my laptop acting up. Rebooted and all is fine.
Probably won’t finish this until tomorrow morning (and I didn't) – the orange things I talked about in the prior post -  for sale next to the dates and prunes – I should have looked closer yesterday – they were orange gum drops. Still don’t know what the little round greenish things are. The guy told us but??? I did taste one. YUCK!!! He said to put chili on them DOUBLE YUCK!
I was reading on line about the “Shrimp Ladies of Mazatlan” so of course we had to go find them. Also had errands to run this morning.
I took some videos with the phone the other night that actually turned out better than the ones with the camera but can’t download them to the laptop – don’t have the right size USB cord. One of the errands – back to Office Depot and yep they had one. So will have to see if I can figure out how to transfer from phone to laptop.
Then to Home Depot to get a hose nozzle. Saw these glass blocks. Don’t know if they’re available in the U.S. or not as there isn’t a Home Depot near us in IN. Sure think they are pretty.

Aren't these pretty

Also went to Sorianas for some groceries. Did you know they made red and green tortillas? From left to right – Nopalinaza, Chipotle and Jalapeno.

From there we headed out to find the “Shrimp Ladies”. Passed these guys just riding down the city street.

This is a CITY street

Then past these “track houses” Guess you can tell which one is yours by the color.

Nice Homes

And we found the “Shrimp Ladies.” I looked up their location on Google Earth and believe it or not the detail was so good you can see their umbrellas lined up on the street.

So this was our first view of them. Parked and walked around looking. Did not smell so good though. Pretty “fishy.”

Different types and sizes in each bucket - chunks of ice in bucket too

They line both sides of the busy street – the street is one of the main bus routes across town. All colors of umbrellas keep the direct sun off of the colorful plastic buckets full of icy water, shrimp and other seafood.



Get it back in it's bag please

The ladies and men all wear white aprons and caps of some sort. As you walk by they are very vocal about their wares and why you should buy from them.

Some of those please

The shrimp are sold by the kilogram, and are sorted by type, color and size into different tubs. Prices are pretty much the same from everyone but sometimes you can haggle the cost. We didn’t buy anything and neither of us really like seafood. I did learn that the large blue? Shrimp are the most expensive. We saw people pointing to which shrimp in the bucket they wanted to buy.
The shrimp you purchase is put in a plastic bag with ice to keep until you get home.
This is a very interesting article I found about the Shrimp Ladies – it was written a couple of years ago but has a lot of great information in it. These are very enterprising women.

http://icsf.net/icsf2006/uploads/publications/yemaya/pdf/english/issue_17/art01.pdf

Across the street were tables with bags and bags of dried shrimp – several sizes and colors.

And right in the middle of the street was this dentist office.

Walking back towards the car we came across this bucket – and these tools.

They are in plastic bags too

Don’t know why you’d need a machete for shrimp. Or the brush like thing. Guess we need to go back there again and try to figure that out.

Also saw this mural as I passed a doorway. Wish I'd looked to see what the door went to.

From here (I mentioned to The Driver that we would need to come back here again cause I didn't get enough pictures) we continued on the the old part of town where we spent the rest of the afternoon.
More later.