Last things first.  We ended the day by watching SkyFall (the latest James Bond movie) at the local theater.  We had a choice of watching it in Spanish or in English with Spanish subtitles.  We chose the later. As the movie started, I whispered to Evelyn that it was horizontally squashed.  It looked like the movie was showing in the wrong format?  A few seconds later, a huge eye was briefly shown on the screen, then a hand, then the distortion disappeared.  I think we just got a peek behind the Curtain of Oz and saw the projector fixing the problem… 🙂

Spoiler Alert!  In SkyFall, James Bond saves the world again!  Oh? You say you guessed that might happen?  Though the ending is never in doubt with James Bond, the route to reach there was as good as any of the series.  This marks the 50th anniversary of our hero’s cinema debut, and introduced some characters that will probably be with us for some time to come.

Yesterday I said that we had planned on going to Sofy’s Orchard for another modelling session, but that it was closed and locked up.  Today GringoTree (an English daily email newsletter with Cuenca announcements) announced that Sofy’s was closed and moving, and to watch for a grand opening announcement in the future. They were stuck way in the back of a small retail enclave, with no front signage, so I’m guessing they decided to try a place with better visibility.

We actualy started today by walking half an hour to Mercado el Arenal, also known locally as Feria Libre.  It is the largest mercado in Cuenca, and Sunday is one of the busiest days. This is the only market in town where we have seen live animals for sale — dogs, chickens, ducks, geese, guinea pigs (known locally as cuy, and raised for eating), rabbits, hamsters, parakeets and crabs.

Lots of animals, but still no cats to be found

There is a huge section selling seafood.  The crabs are live, bundled into rectangular bricks of roughly 40 crabs each, with arms still writhing. There were many thousands of these crabs being sold, and we have been told that everything here is sold by the end of the day, with the price going lower as the day progresses.  These crabs didn’t look like they had much meat in them, so I have no idea how they would be cooked or used in a recipe.

Lots of other varieties of fish were for sale too. Piles of catfish, perch, trout, and many others I could not immediately identify.  Also huge blocks cut from tuna and other larger fish available for sale by the pound.

All the fish are sitting in the open air with no refrigeration. Other than the live crabs, I don’t think I would want to buy fish here…

The next area we came across was the produce section.  There was a massive selection here, with the produce looking quite good at most stalls. Not particularly any better than at Mercado 8 de Octobre that we visited earlier though, and that one was a lot closer.

There are eight different varieties of apples alone in that one image, and produce is stacked in a way to make any American supermarket proud.

There is a section with dry goods, but we bypassed that area. Stacks of shoes, baseball hats, and trinkets don’t hold much interest for us.

The last area we saw was the meat section.  As with the fish, most of the meat is lying out on the counter with no refrigeration.  Interestingly, several of the stalls do have standard meat refrigeration counters, but I could only feel one that was actually chilled.  The others are just used as illuminated display cases, with most of the meat stacked on top.

We returned to our apartment just as the thunder started, and spent a quiet afternoon at home before going out to the cinema in the evening for SkyFall.