Chichicastenango, Guatemala

Chichi is a major market in the Guatemalan highlands. They have two market days, Thursday and Sunday with people from all around the area coming to sell all sorts of goods, from fruit and veges to tools, clothing and other handicrafts - as well as catching up on news and gossip. We were told that apart from those two days, and the setup day before the market, the town is completely dead, with nothing at all going on.

We arrived in Chichi and spent a little time walking through the markets, though there were a massive number of people milling around, so we tried to walk the side streets as much as possible.

The first spot that Andres took us to was the fruit and vege market, which was on an indoor basketball court, it took some time to move from the bottom floor upstairs to where we could have a look at all the action.

























From here we went back out to the streets, and made our way to one of the two churches that face each other in the town. From here we got a good view along the lanes.













We felt it was far too crowded, so found a nice little side street that still had a great selection of things to buy, and took our time walking down there.

We spent most of the time there sitting on the steps of the church people watching - there was a little kid throwing a tantrum for a good period of time and a man building wooden chairs right in front of us.













After looking round the markets, we all met at the church and made our way to a big food hall type thing, where we had a tasty lunch of fried chicken, rice and beans.

After Chichi, we got back in the minivan and made out way to the town of Antigua, our next stop.