Pinatas in the market, Oaxaca
10pinatasoaxaca.jpg, 114K
Oaxaca was a big town in southern Mexico with a sizable foreigner population and a fair amount of tourist throughput. Still, it wasn’t hard to get away from the foreign beat – I walked a few blocks out from the main centre to hit the huge local market, and there wasn’t another one of me to be seen.
It’s hard to emphasise just how big this market was – three or four huge warehouse spaces, crammed full of stalls divided by narrow crowded alleys. Everything you could think of was in there somewhere. I wandered through it for a while, bought some Mexican hip hop from the bootleg CD area, smelled the incredible scents in the spices area, peered at the footwear in the shoes area, then came upon the party-gear area. There were about six stalls jammed full of beautiful, colourful pinatas, all clearly hand-made.
It’s hard not to take a fun picture of these things. They’re fish-in-a-barrel for the travel photographer looking for a good photo, but dammit, I liked them, and I like this picture.
