Tenancingo Market

Beautiful fruit display!

From Valle de Bravo we headed to Tenancingo and more paragliding sites (more on that later). But one of the highlights was definitely the huge and varied market!

Two nights a week is the night market which is set up on the street right outside the door of the place we stayed. This market is for large volume sales to stock the small booths in the main market. It starts about 6 pm, goes all night, and finishes about mid morning the following day.

We went for breakfast the next morning and I had my first gordita made with blue corn and stuffed with squash. It was delicious!

Cooking gorditas and tostados.

Yum!

There were so many interesting food booths!! You could also buy pretty much anything else from clothes to toiletries to electronics but I didn't find those as interesting so didn't take any photos. 

There was also a large meat market and they were readily handing out samples. They would often laugh and shake their heads when we declined and said we're vegetarian! :-) 

Different types of mole.

We saw many people, like this woman, carrying dolls, holding them and covering them in a blanket just like a real baby. We learned that this was in celebration of Dia de la Candelaria on February 2 and the dolls represent baby Jesus.

To quote this article, which I found gave the best description: 

"In the times of Mary and Joseph and their holy babe, (and still practiced by many Mexican women today), it was custom for the mother to have a period of rest and quarantine after birth. The law at the time dictated that a new mother was considered to be unclean during the 40 days after childbirth and therefore required to stay at home. 

February 2nd (40 days after December 24th) would have been the day that Mary took newborn Jesus to the temple to be blessed. To remember this important religious event, Baby Jesus figurines are taken from household nativity scenes (that have been left up since Christmas) and dressed to be presented at the nearest cathedral. While this tradition is slowly dying out in many cities in Mexico, in Oaxaca it is still alive enough to warrant storefront windows full of baby sized dresses and accessories."

There was an entire area of the market (which unfortunately I didn't get a photo of) dedicated to the baby Jesus dolls and the making of them. Some were very fancy and detailed! 

Aside from the market, we had great coffee and tea at Cafe Latte which had this fantastic mural! 

And in the nearby town of Malinalco, this beautiful butterfly mural.