Gigante ("heehahntay") is the name of a chain of Mexican department stores. We have found that these places have the best buys in food, liquor, jewellery, clothing, shoes, books, and even electronics and music. Because we usually travel to Cancun in December, we often do most of our Christmas shopping for our family in Gigante plus we buy souvenirs for our friends. Although selection varies (one day there will be dozens of leather purses in ten different styles and five colours but two days later there may be half a dozen purses and that’s it!), prices are always low and quality is usually high.
On our first trip to Cancun, our maid wrote the name and address of this store on a slip of paper for us. We went outside our hotel, flagged down a bus on the Boulevard Kukulkan, and tried -- in halting Spanish -- to ask the driver to drop us off at Gigante. He and most of the Mexican passengers all laughed good-naturedly at our efforts to speak the local lingo and he simply waved away our precious piece of paper. Sometime later we arrived in downtown Cancun. When we got to the right shopping plaza, everybody on the bus shouted "Gigante!" and pointed across the street. And then most of them got off and went with us. Local folks shop at Gigante, too.
So, to get to Gigante, just tell the bus driver or the cabbie "Gigante, por favor" and I guarantee that he or she will take you to the right place. In downtown Cancun, it’s in a large, modern, two-storey shopping plaza which is clean and well-kept inside and out. Happy shopping!