This city is so very interesting. There are street vendors everywhere. There are little stands on every corner almost and in the middle of the block people lay out blankets or sheets of plastic and display items on them, Food of all kinds is sold by street venders but they also sell cell phone minutes and cell phones and umbrellas and pens and jewelry and newspapers and maps and just about anything else you can think of. One minute they may have a display of cell phones and remote controls for TV’s or game joysticks and then it will start to rain and they will bring out umbrellas and scarfs and hats. The food booths sell everything from hot meat arepas (kind of like a pita bread stuffed with hot meat or whatever) to ice cream and fruit and everything in between. They are resupplied by two or three wheeled bicycles that bring in supplies. The picture below shows a street vender and a resupply tricycle. You can’t see the front of the resupply wagon just the back two wheels but the guy in the resupply wagon is resupplying the vendor that just rode up as we got there.
Bicycles and motorcycles and horse drawn carts are important for transportation. We have seen them carrying things you would not believe. We saw a motorcycle with 4 or 5 sticks of 1 inch pvc pipe strapped to the side sticking out in the front and beyond the back of the bike. The pipes were at least 10-12 ft long. The next thing we saw was two motorcyclists working together to carry a floor polisher. Bicycles routinely pass us with push brooms and equipment for street cleaning. Both Bicycles and motorcycles serve as delivery vehicles for all kinds of restaurants and local merchants. The guy below is loading up to deliver Hamburgers but they also deliver pizza and Chinese food and packages, as well as pipe, floor polishers, and whatever else needs to be moved. There are big trucks and major construction projects but there is a whole economy that is very family entrepreneurship oriented (how do you like that for a sentence). The bicycles and motorcycles help supply this economy.