Mexican artisan / arts and craft market — Local services in Puerto Morelos

DO NOT go into the store that faces the open city square! That man took us inside and shut the door, trapping us inside! They will claim it is to keep in the air conditioning, but they shut the door and stay near it to keep you from easily leaving. You cannot move in that place without the main shopkeeper pouncing on you and harassing you. And when he realized I could understand and speak Spanish, his shady conversation with his female shop help declined drastically. Despite this horrendous tactic, I kept my calm and didn't have a frantic fight-or-flight response. I know these places are not true artisan markets, but I will look at times just to see if anything could be of interest (even as a small gift to someone). I did like a dress, and I did ask about price, but he had the audacity to say it was handmade and high-quality fabric, and my "special discount" was $95! Get real; what highway robbery! Little did he know, I work with fabric and in sewing/crochet/knit, and I knew 100% that the dress was not a high-quality fabric, nor was it handcrafted. If you know where and how to look, you can tell it's factory machine stitching AND where they've cut the tags out. As we tried to leave, he held us hostage in the store with the closed door and said he'd take $80. I explained we didn't have that much cash on us (because we didn't), and he pressured us to use our credit card (which I was not going to allow). The harassment and pressuring is infuriating, especially when you know they are bold-face lying to you about their merchandise. We got out of there and I immediately had to walk across to the coast line for open air because I needed to shake the feeling of being a trapped animal. Heed my words, DO NOT go into the store that faces the open...

Hidden gem! During my walk in this arts and crafts market, I found a nice place that was very different from the other small local stores. It's huge and they have a nice combination of things: they had the best tequila liquors (coco, chocolate, coffee ets) You can taste each and every of them. And the price is $36 - $39 instead of $60 like the others want for 750ml bottle. In Duty Free they sell Bacardy tequila liquors only. There was a very nice chocolate store with a good selection of bars. Reasonable prices for all souvenirs. Big jewelry store with silver and gold items. I found Mexican fire opals there and it wasn't artificial plastic but real ones. It was a pleasure to meet Ilker in this jewelry store - he is a high level professional in his field, besides the fact that he speaks many many languages, he knows everything about gem stones. My dream came true! As I was looking for a fire opal in big cities and big stores, but they didn't have any of them. But this little village had what I was looking for - it...

Completely overpriced shops, often trying to rip you off (everyday they say different prices depending on how gringo they think you are). Only good thing is the large...