Mercado Indio: Shopping for Souvenirs at an Artisan Market in Lima, Peru

With time soon running out on our trip to Peru, we decided to visit the Artisan Market (Mercado Indio) to shop for Peruvian souvenirs to take home as presents for friends and family. The market, located on Petit Thors Avenue, is series of several warehouses with individual shops selling all kinds of different trinkets available for purchase. Wandering through the various aisles, one can't help but notice that many of the items for sale are the same from one store to the next. What can you find in this market? Just about everything. Some of the things we noticed we as follows:
Alpaca sweaters, mittens, winter hats (toques), leg warmers, chess games (Incas versus Spaniards), Coca candy, Cocoa tea, jewelry, masks, wooden carvings, figurines.
My best advice for those visiting the market is to have a good look around before you decide what to purchase. Be prepared to bargain and potentially walk away. Finding a good deal is more likely if you purchase several items from one particular store where they are more likely to give you a discount.
Shopping for Souvenirs at an Artisan Market in Lima, Peru Travel Video Transcript:
So we are taking part in Sam's favourite activity today. We are actually going shopping. So we are visiting a place called Mercado Indio which is like a local craft and artisans market, so we're just going to pick up souvenirs and see what we can find.
So you can buy all sorts of things here. There is Alpaca sweaters, mittens, leg warmers. You can get little chess games of the Incas versus the Spaniards. You can get Coca candy, coca tea, jewelry. The possibilities are endless. You can seriously spend a few hours just browsing around.
I think the cutest thing I've seen so far are the stuffed llamas. I might just bring one to cuddle back home on the plane.
So someone has been a busy little shopper over here. What do we have to show? I guess I'll show you my purchases. So I bought a collection of cute little mirrors. Actually they've been triple and quadruple wrapped in paper.
The big unveil. Okay, so I got a collection of three different mirrors. I think they're really cute. You can put them up on a wall. So yeah, I got some of those. I also got some Coca candy and some Coca tea. And we're going to shop a little bit more and see what we can find. Right?
So I got Coca candy and Coca tea over here. And when I was visiting Machu Picchu five years ago this tea right here helped me to acclimatize to the altitude.
So that concludes our afternoon of shopping. If you feel like checking out the market while you're in Lima it is located on Avenida Petit Thoars.
This is part of our Travel in Peru series. We're making a series of videos showcasing Peruvian culture, Peruvian arts, Peruvian foods, Peruvian religion, Peruvian cuisine and Peruvian people.
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All photos and video taken by Samuel Jeffery (Nomadic Samuel) and Audrey Bergner (That Backpacker).
Music in this video courtesy of Audio Network