Mercado Abastos, Oaxaca

This is Oaxaca's biggest market area, and exploring everything inside it is quite an experience. The markets are large, varied, and easy to get lost in. The more tame areas sell bags, music, kitchenware, and clothing. Further in, you can find the fruit and vegetables, the live chickens, and the cooked food stands. Venture in as deep as you can, and you'll find the really strange stuff: whole dead chickens, still with heads and feet on; piles of dead fish staring up at you; and of course, the famous fried grasshoppers of Oaxaca.

Fresh fruit at the mercado.

I didn't buy much, but pretty much everything was offered to me, whether cooked or raw, alive or dead (I often didn't quite know which of these categories many things fitted into). There weren't that many tourists around; obviously this place is more for the locals to do their serious shopping. I felt reasonably safe here, although I was reluctant to pull my camera out more than occasionally.

Found a great BBQ chicken joint after finishing my wanderings, and I tucked into a delicious half-a-chicken meal, plus side stuff. The meal filled me up so well, that I decided to skip dinner tonight.