La Iglesia De Santo Tomàs.

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Chichicastenango, afternoon.
It's afternoon and the market is in full swing. We've moved to a comedor drinking Victoria beer, in fact the whole table in this dank and dark hole is covered with empty bottles, full ashtrays and plates with chicken bones, leftovers from our lunch.
We're surrounded by indios and latinos laddling down cheap soup for supper, having a quick beer and a smoke before diving back into the mêlee of Chichicastenango's sunday market.
looking through the comedor's dirty window I can see shiny tourbuses parked just beyong the market unloading dozens of americano tourists dressed in shorts with pinkish legs and fat McDonald bred asses, their camaras gaggling away in all directions.
Both James and Peter are wasted on the luke warm Victoria beer so I ask Nora if she wants to come along to the Iglesia de Santo Tomàs, she is stoned out of her mind after all the joints she has smoked but is still able to walk and talk semi-coherently. Leaving Brain-Damaged Mary Carmen to look after James and Peter who will probably fall into the arms of Morpheus real soon.
The curch looks ancient from the outside and the stone stairs to the main entrance are shrouded in huge clouds of insence. The floor inside this holy place is covered with pine boughs, flowers and kernels of maize, we detect no chairs or benches like in a typical cristian church.
Candles are everywhere, local women and whole failies sitting around in quiet contemplation. I see women swinging empty vegetable cans around that are riddled with holes, insense coming out of the holes while chanting words in a language I do not understand, names carved into the stone floor betray me that there are actually people burried directly beneath us.
I decide to abhert from telling Nora about my suspicions of people resting in death right beneath our feet, she's freaked out enough already as it is, no doubt due to the enormous amount of pot she inhaled today.
I guide her to a free spot near the wall so we can experience the strange magic of this place.

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Photos

sunday market
indio women

sunday market
busking at Chichicastenango

sunday market
more indio ladies