2024

MERCADO MODELO

Markets
4/5
1 review

One of the most typical markets in Peru. You will find as usual fruits and vegetables, fruit juices, clothes, handicrafts, but also and especially, a corner reserved for the brujos (witch doctors). In these stalls you can find medicinal or hallucinogenic plants, whale bones, snake skins, powders and ritual objects... A very popular place for shamans. It is worth the detour for the open minded or to learn more about the pre-Hispanic traditions still used today.

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 Chiclayo
2024

ARTESANAL MERCADO

Markets
3.3/5
3 reviews

Puno is the most important center of poncho weaving and other clothing made of llama and alpaca wool. This handicraft market is full of good quality clothes. There are also masks worn during the diablada, musical instruments, and the famous torito of Pucará. You will also find many trinkets. Enough to please yourself or your friends when you return! Don't hesitate to bargain, as the same items are sold at better prices at the Laykakota market, a little further out.

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 Puno
2024

MERCADO DE BELÉN

Markets

A floating and popular district that can be reached by canoe during the rainy season from El Huequito up the Itaya River, or on foot from the center along the Malecon Tarapaca. Don't hesitate to go into the alleys, especially the Paquito passage, where you will find all sorts of medicinal plants (including the liana used to prepare ayahuasca). During the rainy season, the dry land disappears. The streets become canals and vehicles are replaced by boats that the kids row with a steady hand. This is undoubtedly the most photogenic time of the year for tourists. Belén is an active commercial center, acting at the same time as a port, a market, a living area (there is even a floating discotheque!) and a meeting point between fishermen, farmers and traders unloading their products of the forest from their dugout canoes. With its houses on stilts, Belén is the exact portrait of an Amazonian port as our western imaginations conceive it: agitated, noisy, interloped, a little ghostly, a little unreal, but always fascinating... In dry season, the place will make you feel very different: colorful and lively, but also very dirty.

To visit the lower part of the mercado, for the safety of your belongings, choose a local guide who will know how to lead you as it should be. Above all, be discreet with your camera. As for all the markets, the visit is more interesting in the morning.

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 Iquitos