October 8, 2007

Before leaving on our road trip we had envisioned Mexico and Central America to be full of markets where we could buy exquisite home-made handicrafts at dirt cheap prices.

Not so. Or at least not in the locales we had been so far.

In particular, we had been disappointed with the Massaya market in Nicaragua.

We heard so much about it from travelers we had met along the way, but to us it – along with most of the markets we had visited so far - was stocked mainly with cheap imported goods from Asia.

But Guatemala's Western Highlands - populated by Mayan groups that have lived there for over 2,000 years and that have managed to hold on to their ancient languages, dress and traditions - are different.

And it was the Mayan presence and their bedazzling markets that made our nine days in Antigua and Pananjachel the most interesting leg of the entire trip from a "we are experiencing a culture far different than our own" perspective.

We used Panajachel as the jumping off point to access nearby towns on their various market days, including the Saturday Solola market and the Sunday Chichicastenango market.

The Solola market, only a 20-minute bus ride up the hill from Panajachel, was clearly for the locals - there wasn't much in the way of handicrafts for sale.

There was, however, aisle after aisle of tightly packed stalls, with vendors selling fruits, vegetables (the best vegetables we saw on the entire trip, bar none, were those grown and sold by the Mayas at the markets in western Guatemala), seeds, pasta, beans, nuts, tortillas, live chickens, eggs, watches, shoes woven mats, as well as clothes and furniture.

After navigating the impossibly tight corridors of the market trying to avoid being trampled by tiny Mayan women, we spent a couple of hours sitting in the town plaza as the locals socialized and enjoyed time with their families.

With the colourful clothes, it was one of our "pinch-me" moments of the trip, as it was easy to imagine the market being pretty much the same 100, 500 or 1,000 years ago.

The Sunday "Chichi" market is generally considered to be one of the best, if not the best, market in Guatemala for handicrafts.

Although it was overrun with idling tour buses, it was still well worth the visit, as it was massive and packed with high-quality items. We bought colourful blankets, wooden masks and jewelry.

The most fascinating part of the market, though, is that it envelopes a church - the Iglesia de Santo Tomas - that practices a religion that fuses ancient Mayan practices with Catholicism.

With incense burning, drums beating, candles flickering, and colour bursting out everywhere, the activity on the church's front stairs provided us with the most amazing sensory overload of the entire trip.

Key Facts & Figures:

-Public Bus, Panajchel to Solola market: $0.60/each
-Van Tour, Panajachel to Chichicastenango market: $8.75/each