Las Cholitas

We had wanted to arrive in La Paz for a Sunday, so that we could go and see the Cholitas Wrestling. Quite a modern thing to find in these countries, this was female wrestling. It started as local women taking a stand against domestic violence and raising money to support victims of this abuse. Now it is quite a tourist attraction and many people come each week to watch the women throw each other around while wearing huge skirts at the same time. 

We were out of our quiet village spot at a reasonable time as yet again, they were trying to assemble a huge stage where we were parked. They were pretty friendly about it though and soon we moved out of their way after a frosty night. We were now very close to El Alto, this is one of the outer districts of La Paz and as you might guess from the name, it’s also higher at about 4000m. We planned to head in and park securely at the airport. There’s two choices here, either you can pay about £8 to be in proper secured parking or you can pay about 40p to just be in the regular car park. As much as it’s nice to be more secure, all this parking was under a roof and we wanted the solar. We opted to stay in the cheaper car park and I decided that I’d just make sure our valuables were locked up in the van as a precaution. 

With things as secure as they were going to get, we headed out to try and buy some tickets to the Cholitas. There were two points marked, the first a large sports hall was all padlocked up, and the second could not be found anywhere. We decided that we were probably too early and so went for a walk around the biggest street market I have ever seen, that takes over every single surrounding road here on a Sunday. 

The market literally sold everything. We bought a new very bright torch, specifically for finding the cats. We could have bought any number of cars parts too, but settled instead on stocking up our fuse collection and buying a new fuel filter that was long overdue for a change. 

We wandered down the endless stalls, picking at street food and grabbing a cheap local lunch of fried fish and potatoes. Places like this it’s cheaper to eat out rather than cook. We paid £2 for two filling meals, whereas to cook ourselves the fish alone would have cost more. After several hours and more miles, we reached the end and began to retrace our steps back. We decided we would go back to the van to drop off our new purchases before heading back out to try the wrestling again. By the time we had go to the airport, we didn’t have all that much time and we were also not sure if we were going to the right venue. It seemed simpler to jump in a taxi at this point, we were also pretty tired from hours of walking around. While you’d think the taxi’s would know where to go, none of them seemed interested in taking us or seemed to know where it was. So once again, we walked back. 

This time, the doors were open and we were glad to see that we were indeed in the right place. We purchased our tickets and took up two plastic chairs on the side of the ring. It filled up pretty fast, although there was plenty of sitting up behind on the permanent concrete steps. While the gringos filled up the front seats, the locals opted for the latter. It was certainly a popular tourist event, all the chairs were filled and not a single local face was to be seen. 

After about an hours wait, the music started. First up we had a couple of teenage lads ‘wrestling’. It was very fake and very bad, so I suppose that in itself was entertaining. We hoped the women would be a little better though. Fortunately, they were. We watched three different matches and while it is clearly staged, we still had a great time. We watched the women in their multiple frilly skirts throw themselves at each other, sometimes from the height of the ropes.

Even though it was planned, there were definitely things that I wouldn’t like to try myself. Certainly the part where one of them took a can of beer from the crowd and smashed it over her opponents head. They certainly threw themselves into it and for a good cause too. After around an hour and a half, the women took to a side stage for photos and we headed back out. It was only around half an hour to walk back to Ruby and we hoped that the busy road was a little quieter now at night. 

You would have thought, as did I, that the capital city La Paz would house the main airport. However, while La Paz is still the capital on paper and the highest city in the world for that matter, it is somehow not really the capital of Bolivia. Bolivia is around 425,000 square miles yet only boasts a population of about 12 million people. Compare this to our country, England is a mere 50,300 square miles yet has a population of over 56 million people. When looking at these statistics side by side it becomes clearer why a country such as Bolivia doesn’t really have large cities. The largest in fact is Santa Cruz de la Sierra, located out towards the Amazon. This is the place you’ll most likely arrive, especially if flying in from another continent. What all of this meant to us at that immediate moment was that the airport of El Alto where we were parked, was not particularly busy. Despite this, the road was. It seemed a bit odd as there wasn’t that many planes actually coming or going but the traffic didn’t really stop at all during the night. 

On top of this, we had also managed to break the main laptop. trying to be security conscious and lock it away in our bench seat, we had managed somehow to break its screen. It wasn't the first time this had happened, but last time we had insurance. This time we knew we couldn't afford to repair it.

As we certainly wouldn’t be staying here again, we packed away ready to leave in the morning. We needed somewhere the cats could be allowed out after walking a very grumpy Aimee in the freezing cold the night before. We saw that we were actually quite close to some VW mechanics and went to see if they knew any good part shops. 

Leo and Tacu run a small workshop with their dad. Like most VW shops it’s easily spotted by the obligatory dilapidated bay window parked outside. Today was La Paz Day, and so everything was shut. However we sent them a message on WhatsApp and met up anyway. After a bit of a chat, we had agreed to come back the next day. Then Leo turned up. He said they were going to a party a few hours from here and did we want to come. That’s about as much information as we were given though. However, since the random stuff is often the best, we agreed. 

At first we thought we were all going, then it turned out that it was just us and him and his Colombian girlfriend, Sandra. At this point I wasn’t sure exactly what we were going to, but we set off out of La Paz. Ruby chose this moment to show us up, one of the fans stopped working and she struggled out of the city on the mountains roads. It was actually a welcome sight to see a queue of traffic at the toll station. Sandra and I walked down the line of vendors and I brought some rather amazing looking french bread and this puffed maize snack I’ve been meaning to try for a while. Back in the cars, Ruby made it a bit further before we were forced to pull over yet again. This was particularly annoying as we had no idea where we were going and were trying to follow Leo in his beetle. After a while though, we made it to the top of the pass and saw him pulled over at the side waiting for us. We had made it to a large statue of Christ that looks out of this huge desolate valley at 4600m. Now we went to move to the car park and it was time for his car not to start. At least Ruby was the only temperamental VW. 

Once we had go into the car park, we left the cars and donned another layer. An extra 600 metres higher and in the cloud it was cold up here. Leo brought a bottle of coke and we walked up to the statue. We took it in turn to pour a bit of coke around the bottom of the statue, a ‘sacrifice’ to bring good luck to us as travellers. At this point, I’ll take all the luck I can get, even if it’s from sticky Jesus. 

After reassuring us it was all downhill now, we went back to our cars. His eventually fired up and we set off, hoping the brakes would hold. They were making a nasty grinding noise and were on our list of things to do. We now knew we were heading to Coroico, nearly a 3000m descent. On the way, we passed the entrance to the death road, at one time the most dangerous road in the world. Now mainly featuring bike tours since the bypass in 2009, we planned on driving that another day. 

We headed down steeply, through what I imagine would be beautiful scenery but at this current moment was shrouded in cloud. A short way down, we pulled over to the side of the road near a line of restaurants. These tiny little buildings sat in a neat row at the side of the road. While they all looked different we were told that they only served one thing; trout. It was lucky therefore that we liked trout and as we had eaten it fried in the market the other day, this time we went for a soup. It’s served here with chuno, a kind of dehydrated and then rehydrated potato. 

After eating lunch at about 5pm, we continued downwards. As we neared the bottom we pulled over for Leo to buy us some gas. Then he told us that they had a hotel booked in Caranvani, another hour and a half away. We didn’t really have any idea what was going on at this point, but we didn’t really want to drive another hour and a half in the dark when what we really needed to do was be in La Paz fixing the grinding brakes. It seemed now that this wasn't a get together at all really like we had thought, and more like we were gatecrashing his romantic minibreak. He said that we could camp nearby and that we could eat dinner, apparently there was a place that had five swimming pools. OR, that we could drive on to Caravani which had 10 pools! I don’t care much for swimming pools as it is, so we decided we’d stay close. We drove to a nearby spot, but apparently they had now built huge garages on it since we’d last been there. We had a look for some likely spots while Leo asked about camping. We still weren’t sure if they were staying here or had booked something else, it was all a bit lost in translation. When he returned he told us that there was a nearby campsite, but we’d already checked that and it was extortionate. 

In the end, he bought a chicken for dinner, despite the fact we ate less than two hours ago, and we set off to a wild camp spot we’d found. And so our evening finished with us sitting outside, drinking a few beers and having a nice chat. As the slight drizzle turned into more determined rain, the two of them headed onwards to Caravani. It was a shame really, I couldn't for the life of me understand why we had driven all this way, with no plan at all, knowing full well that tomorrow we’d need to drive all the way back. It certainly wasn’t a two hour drive, more like 5. It seemed like it would have been better to just chill outside his house with a couple of beers than instead of spending all this time driving. We could have enjoyed each other’s company for more time too, as they were both lovely people. Still, that is the way here sometimes. You get invited to something with no plan behind it whatsoever and the best thing you can do is simply go with the flow.