It is five o'clock in the morning, but shoppers in La Salada market in Buenos Aires are already going home. They drag rubbish sacks full of T-shirts, trainers and pirated dvds across the car park to board waiting coaches. Some have come to stock their shops, others to fill their wardrobes. They started shopping when the market opened at 3am, and have travelled from as far as Neuquen, a Patagonian city 15 hours away. La Salada is thought to be South America's largest informal market. Around 30,000 wire-mesh stalls spill out of three warehouses in an unsavoury neighbourhood on the outskirts of the capital. Its administrators reckon that on Tuesdays, Thursdays and Sundays, when the market is open, more than 250,000 shoppers browse its stalls. Tens of thousands of people help keep La Salada running-selling, protecting, cleaning and supplying the market. At the Punta Mogote warehouse, where most stalls are underground, so many people faint that an ambulance is kept on site.
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