De compras

Perhaps the thing which most annoys me about shopping in Central America is the way you can barely get a foot over the threshold of any given retail outlet before the personnel within have homed in on you and are offering assistance, which no amount of "no thank yous" or "I'm just lookings" can shake off.

At Wal Mart in Mexico recently, I was astounded to find the face-masked staff behind the embutidos counter calling out to me like the hawkers around the exit of Cancún's international airport.

The thing that most annoys V about shopping in Central America is that no matter how completely empty a shop at first appears to be, she only has to start browsing in one small part of it and she's quickly being shoulder-barged by other punters seemingly intent on investigating what she source of her interest had been.

Anyway, we both discovered a new not-so-annoying place to shop in Guatemala yesterday: the San Martin Bakery. When the theatrically-attired muchacha popped up at our side offering us a little basket and some assistance in filling it, we were charmed rather than put upon.

Their pan integral is not quite as good as Doña Luisa's (and at Q22, almost double the price) but they also sell excellent baguettes (and baguettios), pan de pasa, pan de papa, and mushy little panes de agua, favoured by discerning younger/older customers with fewer teef...or so we were told.

On the website these feature as a graphical device to help visitors navigate the menu bar, and are very delicious, we later discovered, filled with pechugas of Pollo Tejano (from Hiper Paiz), chopped tomatoes, a slice of kiwi fruit, a dollop of fresh cream and a little bit of cilantro.