Mercado Aguas Calientes

This guide to the Mercado Aguas Calientes follows the two hundred twenty stalls packed into a covered corridor every visitor to Machu Picchu must pass through on the way to the buses. It traces the handwoven alpaca textiles made on backstrap looms and dyed with crushed cochineal insects, a technique older than Inca stonework, alongside stalls where tourists test panpipes and guitars before buying. The tension of the weave is held in the weaver's own body, the strap looped around her waist instead of a frame.