Thursdays and Sundays the market sets up on the main street about five blocks away from our house. It takes up some eight blocks of sidewalk, and is the main event for my Sunday afternoon.

Some stands have vegetables, some fruit. Some have fish that they clean for you right there. Some stands have plastic dishes, and some have shower curtains. Some people bring boxes of bags of yarn of all different colors. Some people bring fistfuls of bandaids. Some people sell used and broken radios and others sell "brand new" pirated cds. Think farmer's market meets flea market.

Each week, twice a week, early in the morning the old chevy pickups loaded to the point of breaking their shocks with crates of bananas, oranges and kiwis jockey with the tiny Asia Focus mini-mini-vans full of second-hand clothes for a parking spot along the curb. Then the feria workers (think carnival workers, the way they hawk their wares) set up their stands and tents, and begin to sell to the first arrivals.

Right before lunch, the action heats up, both in terms of the weather and the number of shoppers. I arrive around one, in the middle of the pack of people paseando, maybe buying or maybe not. I weave my way around the grandmas going slow, the baby strollers doubling as shopping carts, the teenagers I keep an eye on, the strolling couples, and the street dogs excited about all the commotion.

I bring a market cart from home, and fill it up with four kilos of apples, three kilos of bananas, two kilos of oranges, maybe a pineapple, a huge cabbage, two kilos of carrots, five green peppers, some really long celery, and however many lemons I have enough money leftover to buy. It all costs me 4000 chilean pesos - cuatro mil - less than 8 US dollars. I truck my produce for the week home, walking the five blocks trailing my market cart over the cracked sidewalks.

By four o'clock, they are tearing down the stands, loading the unsold merchandise onto the trucks, and tying their tent tarps down to cover the goods. At five the city is sending in the street sweepers with their brooms and a garbage truck for all the loose cabbage leaves, broccoli stems, squashed tomatoes, discarded fish pieces, remains of oranges that were cut and offered to prospective clients, and rotten potatoes.

The next day you hardly know the feria was ever there, nor that it will all happen again later that week. The only hint is the yellow painted "parking spaces" on the wide sidewalk where the feria stands will return next time I need to get out and mingle with my neighbors and buy a canteloupe or two.