Cholita Wrestling. That is all.

THIS POST IS IN THE WRONG ORDER... THIS HAPPENED BEFORE THE LAST POST!!

One of the last things I did before jumping into a cab at 6:30am Sunday morning was to arrange another meet-up with the new group of friends for Cholita Wrestling the next afternoon. Now for those of you unfamiliar with the Cholita, let me spell it out for you... These women, as I have previously mentioned in my blog, are the staple of Bolivian tradition. Dressed in a matching costume of long, black plaits, 3/5 length skirt, bowler hat of some description, with a coloured handmade rug slung over the back packed with goods and usually with a baby on the tit (or in the rug).

These women are EVERYWHERE in Bolivia. And after a while, you don't even notice them pass by. But if you stopped to look at one and try to imagine her pulling the plaits of another inside a WWF-style wrestling ring, you may have a little difficulty. Which is why I was so intrigued when I saw an ad for this very scenario on my city map. We had to go.

So us 5 piled into a regular sized cab (a mean feat with a giant Dutch man in the group) and circled up and up and up towards the Alto, a place not famed for its fair and safe practices. Several times on the way up we were convinced the driver was sending us into the mouths of the La Paz mafia, but eventually we got there and boy, was it worth it.

First, we had to endure REALLY bad acting from male wrestlers like The Cobra, The Commando... and THEN they came out. It was definitely the pinnacle of the evening. All the gringos - sat around the ring in special "tourist" seating with their little souvenir and free popcorn on entry - were soaked by water thrown by one crazy cholita, as they dodged the pair falling over the railing and jumping all over each other... it was hilarious. I have the videos to prove it.

Afterwards, we opted instead for the local minibus to get back into town and then went back to the same bar we always went to. We had a few drinks but I took it easy, thinking we would be heading to Copacabana the next morning, but me and M still didn't make it back to the hostel until about 1am. For the second night in a row, we had to knock madly for quite a while before the night watchman came to let us in. Oops.