Miraflores Mall is my own personal vision of Hell. You can buy designer clothes and sunglasses, eat champagne flavored crepes and watch the latest blockbusters at the multiplex - but no-where will you be able to buy a newspaper.

Built over the now destroyed ruins of the great Maya metropolis of Kamimaljuyu, the mall is located on Calzada Roosevelt in Guatemala city - the main road to Antigua.

I prefer the older, dowdier neighboring mall of Tikal Futura, where I sometimes go to play pool, go bowling or watch a movie (at cheaper prices to next door). Named after a jewel of the Maya world - the great city of Tikal - the Futura mall was, like Miraflores, constructed over the ruins of Kamimaljuyu. A monument of consumer culture commemorates a society largely destroyed by their over-consumption.

Perhaps my favourite feature of any of the malls in Guate city that I have explored is in Los Proceres mall near Parque Obelisco in the Zona Viva. Located on the third floor, the shopfront of Variety Clothes & More displays a mannequin with such disproportionately oversized breasts, that it can only be the product of schoolboy humour by bored production line workers.

Malls such as Miraflores, Tikal Futura and Los Proceres are important social hubs. Bright, secure and pleasant to walk around, they have become the favored day-time meeting points of many Guatemalans living in the capital. A lack of safe public space in Guatemala city - such as parklands - means there are few alternatives to just hang out or go for a walk.