The Central Mercado is in Zona 1~kind of a dangerous area of town, so I never go alone. The first time I went with my Egyptian friend, Yosra, it took us 2 hours to get there, even though we had directions. Now, I takes about 15 minutes and I'm going the right way on all the one-way streets!
The Mercado has 3 levels~the first is all shops that sell textiles, crafts, gawdy statues, trinkets~any kind of Guatemala souvenir you could want. You can bargain to your heart's content. We have our eyes on a gorgeous chest, carved with Guatemalan scenes. The price is Q4000, roughly $500, but the shopkeeper said she would give us "un buen precio." When we get closer to leaving Guate, we'll get serious about bargaining.
The second level is food and flowers. You can't believe the enormous stacks of fruits and veggies of all kinds (many that I don't recognize.) We've tried a few mystery fruits that were interesting~
This is the cashew fruit. You can see the pod on the end where the cashew nut grows. No wonder they are so expensive~one nut on that big fruit. I haven't tasted the fruit yet.
Not only do they sell fruits and vegetables, there are shops with prepared food (that we would never eat~like eating on the street, which is a BIG no-no) and a meat market. I must say that the smell at the meat market is pretty disgusting. No refrigeration or ice, just slabs of meat hanging and large containers of mariscos, pescado, and pollo. Interesting, however.
The 3rd level (all the levels go down) has everything you could ever want to have a party or decorate. Baskets, pottery, candles, ribbon, tacky styrofoam figures, dried flowers. We've gotten some fun pots there. I also bought 12 ceramic soup bowls, Q5 each. It is said that these bowls keep soup hot and enhance the flavor of whatever is in them. They are glazed and I got thinking about what they use 1)to make the bowls and 2) to glaze the bowls. I'm certain it's not FDA approved. But soup really does stay hot and is very tasty in these little bowls. And, no GI upsets yet.
A fun, fun place.
2 comments:
very interesting, indeed. I bet there is nothing in those bowls except a little lead or something and who ever heard of lead hurting someone :)...can't wait to come to Guatemala and see all these things first hand!!
I actually bought you some of the bowls and was going to bring them home for Christmas. I decided against it~don't want my precious sweethearts eating from bowls glazed with boat shellac or ??
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