Given that I didn’t want to waste a touring day, I headed out into the dreary rain determined to take some pictures of the town I’d arrived in just yesterday, but by the time I got there, it had really started pouring so I decided to go looking for a supermarket instead. After talking the the receptionist in the hostel that morning, I was not quite clear as to what I would find at the location she had circled on my map, but she had also assured me that everything would be closed on Sunday. As I arrived at what was represented on my map as a giant shopping cart, I found it to be nothing more than the town shopping mall which was in fact closed today.

I’d read in my guide book that there was a farmer’s market somewhere in the old part of town so I went off in search of it, by now with stomach grumbling and brain wondering whether I was going to eat before tomorrow. To my surprise, despite how abandoned the modern part of town was, the tiny streets of the old town were filled with vendors selling fruits, vegetables, breads, and everything else I’d need to fill my belly and lift my spirit.

I squeezed along the narrow streets with the rest of the tourists, trying to avoid the rain cascading from the edges of the vendor canopies and decided I’d better grab two day’s worth of food in case the rain worsened or the markets in this crazy country were closed on Mondays as well.

As I headed back up to the hostel, I was filled with a sense of accomplishment for the day, and I wondered why, when all I had really done was venture out for a few hours in the rain to return with nothing more than a small bag of food. Suddenly I was accutely aware of what it would be like to be an animal in the wild and came to appreciate my primal awareness that I would survive a couple more days.