Oxcutzcab market

Ahhhh, another market. We didn't get pictures from inside this one because Ginger's intestinal parasites were doing their stuff (and mine weren't much better behaved). It was kinda scary. We were still in search of the elusive cheap hipiles. We had been assured by all the available literature that Oxcutzcab was definitely the hub of hipil-making in the universe. Note the mural over the market entrance. The ends are decorated with typical hipil stitchery patterns. We did find a few inside, but, again, all out of my cheap-skate price range. Beautiful, but I just couldn't bring myself to spend so much on something I would probably never get many chances to wear.

Welcome to Oxcutzcab

This mural at the entrance of Oxcutzcab was really cool. It says, "Welcome to the orchard of the state." If you look carefully, you can see in the right-hand corner of the first picture, a guy pedaling a big tricycle taxi. We made use of this transportation service, but felt a little guilty about it since our big white US asses took up the whole bench and we could hear our drivers grunt from time to time. The vehicles really aren't made for our juno-esque figures. But it's fun and it helps the local people. One of the tricycle taxi drivers told us that he makes an average of $50 (pesos) per day (that's $5 US, folks). Higher than the minimum wage in Mexico, by a long-shot, but crappy all the same.

The road to Oxcutzcab

Ginger, being a rabid fan of agroforestry, HAD to stop and take these pictures along the road from Ticul to Oxcutzcab. I like them a lot too. Agroforestry, for those of you who are as yet un-hipped to agricultural lingo, is the practice of combining agricultural production with forest products. For example, planting coffee in the shade of fruit trees to harvest both, prevent erosion, and boost soil productivity while providing habitat for migratory birds and other cool things. Sorry if that description is not accurate enough, Ginger. In the case here, the farmers are growing corn with bananas in the first photo and I don't know what in the second (looks like bananas to me). The third is an irrigation conduit and the last one is a house that looks pretty typical for the area. Note the open doorways: great for breezes, sucky for mosquitos. I think it's a beautiful house. If it were warm here year round I'd build one like it.

Ticul, pottery capital?

Ok, we were also led to believe that Ticul was the pottery capital of the world. That ALL of the pretty red-clay pottery was made here. So we looked, and found very little. Now, to Ticul's credit, this was probably squarely the fault of me and Ginger. We should have asked around, because apparently this is a cottage industry and families sit around making ceramic stuff in their gardens. We did stop at one place on the road going out of Ticul. We cleverly identified it as a ceramic production workshop. What tipped us off was all the ceramics in the yard, around the house, and the guys loading the truck with pieces apparently to be hauled to a larger city for sale. We didn't see anything we really liked a lot, but I did get this GREAT picture of Ginger inspecting a pot.

Possibly the best market picture of all time

I mean, really, what could I add? Words fail. Perhaps a haiku?
Painted beer logo.
Bananas and bras for sale.
Market in Ticul.

Goofin at the Ticul market

Here I am browsing the hipiles. They were all too expensive (like $25 or $30 -US). Ok, maybe that's not expensive, but I can be pretty cheap sometimes (shut up Buddy). And, here I am being all geeky and pretending to operate the tortilla machine. The teenage girls that were working there thought it was the funniest thing in the world that I was gonna pretend to work the machine in a picture. Actually, people all over the market thought it was funny that we were taking pictures of the vegetables and people. Everybody wanted their picture taken.

More market scenes

More market pictures. Because you deserve it :)
Note the hipiles that the women are wearing. Despite it's reputation for being the hipil capital of the world, Ticul did not live up to it's hipil-makin' hype. Or, possibly, Ginger and I just didn't go to the right places- one can never be sure. Another spelling of the garment might, just possibly might, be huipil. But we saw it written down in a few places and always spelled hipil. Now, the huipil is what I've always called it, because that's the name for the women's shirt-thing that the highland maya wear. It is a shirt and it's highly decorated with embroidery and it's worn tucked in at the waist and with a wide belt and skirt. So the dress that the Yucatecan Maya women wear is not exactly the same because it's a one-piece long dress, worn over a slip-like skirt with lots of decorative lace at the hem. Some of the fancier ones had embroidery on the lacy slip part that matched the embroidery on the dress itself. That would have been the one of my dreams, but the ones we were able to find were all too expensive. Alas.