Wrestling & Death Road

Back in La Paz, I only had 2 things to cover, but because that place is made for partying, it took another week to do them and another week of partying before I made my escape. The first of those was the much anticipated midget wrestling, billed as "Cholita wrestling", featuring as it does women dressed up in traditional Bolivian dress, wrestling with each other and with men.

My expectations of some midget content had been managed by others who'd recently been and said we'd be lucky to see any, but I felt a little short changed, if you'll excuse the pun. Still, it was one of the most amusing things I've seen and worth the effort.


The guys were all dressed up in ludicrous outfits, the referees got involved with the "fights" and the cholitas got stuck in. All were "goodies" or "baddies" as you could tell from the reaction of the locals who go every week. They get the crowd involved as well, and it's encouraged that you throw fruit or whatever at the "baddies" when they're "cheating" or throwing things themselves at the crowd.





They'd throw each other out of the ring and jump off the ropes, use props as weapons, chase each other around the arena, and it was all just very silly and very entertaining. The sight of a Cholita jumping from the ropes (click to play below) was worth the admission alone.

The other compulsory thing on my list was "Death Road" - a long downhill mountain bike ride down what they say is the world's most dangerous road, And it's true - people can and do die on that ride.



It starts when they drop you in the cold and rain at 4300m, and you ride down 65km of sealed road, overtaking trucks if you fancy. Which I did. Then you start the hard part - another 3-4 hours of nearly constant downhill (obviously not as hard as it would be going up...), with sheer drops several hundred feet down - if you ride off the edge you're not coming back up.



Our agency had good bikes so I got more cocksure as I went. Probably too much. I expected to be hanging at the back and taking it easy but instead I ended up pushing it as hard as I could and taking corners close to the edge. I enjoyed that ride from start to finish and would happily have been taken back to the top to do it all over again.



The visibility wasn't great in parts the day we did it, but the scenery was still clearly amazing and riding through the mist close to the top had an eerie atmosphere. If you should find yourself in La Paz considering doing Death Road, pay for a good company with good bikes and safety gear. Plenty of people have accidents that don't involve riding off the edge - 2 in our group had minor falls - but your odds are better if you've got better kit.

Rurrenabaque

The pampas and jungle tours are based from Rurrenabaque (or "Rurre" as it's known), an hour north of La Paz by plane, or 20 hours on a bus. I'd spoken to someone who went by bus, sharing their tiny bench seat with a family and their crate of chickens. As interesting and authentic as that experience would have been, the novelty would have worn off well inside 20 hours so I opted for a flight. Transport in and out of Rurre was tricky when I went. The flight I did book was delayed by a day due to the airstrip at the other end being too wet, and when we did arrive we found the town busy with people who'd done their tours but were still waiting to get out.

The thing was, apparently there'd been a factory planned for construction near Rurre, but the location was changed not long before construction was due to commence. The locals, unhappy that more jobs wouldn't be coming after all, did what Bolivians do best (next to striking) and blockaded the roads in and out of the area. This had been going on for 2 weeks before we got there, and they spiced things up by setting off dynamite on the roads to boot. All of which meant no buses were getting in or out, leaving hundreds of gringos to compete for the limited number of spaces on flights, on the days they were going. (I should make it clear here I have no problem with the Bolivians' appetite for civil disruption: it's good to see people exercising their voice instead of rolling over and accepting corruption and broken promises as just another thing to endure)



Another consequence of the blockades was a shortage of fuel, which made it harder to find an agency offering the tour we were after. In Rurre you choose between a jungle tour, which is said to be better for plants and insects, or the pampas tour, through more open terrain, which is said to feature more (larger) animals. Nothing against bees or trees, but it was the pink dolphins we were after. The agency we wanted had no gas for the pampas tour, but we found another which did and which was just starting up pampas tours, having in the past specialised in the jungle. Most of the agencies doing pampas go to the same part of the river, but this agency was going to a different part, and offered horse riding as part of the tour. We fancied something different so we chose them, and were the 2nd group they'd ever taken.



On one part of the river we had to stop and clear some trees that had fallen and were blocking the river, which involved hacking with machete and pulling all the roots and branches out. With alligators in the area and it being difficult to see below the surface, this was something of an added adrenaline rush.



It's amazing how your perception of an experience can change over time. The tour was great, and we had a good group, but at first I was a little underwhelmed at the wildlife. Maybe after the Galapagos I'd subconsciously expected there to be hundreds of pink dolphins waving us in with their flippers, and was almost disappointed to find just a few solitary ones occasionally breaking the surface, and certainly not hanging around to swim with us. No Flipper the Dolphin here.



But looking back on it, there were huge birds of paradise swooping through the air, we saw more alligators than I could count, the occasional capybara (a rodent the size of a pig), and of course monkeys, and some turtles too. So while it wasn't quite evidence of that concentration of biodiversity I'd heard about, it was still pretty bloody amazing. Back in Rurre afterwards, the roads were by now open again, but we were still stuck for a couple of days waiting for the backlog to clear. We had fun there and I could happily have been stuck there for longer, it was such a great little spot.

Copacabana & La Paz

With the national strike over and the border open for business again, it was an easy 4 hours around the lake to get to Copacabana. I seem to have a habit of turning up at places when there's something significant happening, and there was a big festival in Copacabana this weekend.

Seemingly the whole town was out, involved in a carnival procession with marching bands and colourfully dressed women and men dancing in various uniforms through the town streets.



Much of the town was also on the grog, with the men huffing from cans between puffing on their tubas and trumpets. You could tell from each man's stagger whether they'd already done their lap of the town yet. The stoutly-built older women stuck to shaking their heads in weary despair at the pissed men and completing the procession with the slightly-less-stout-but-heading-in-that-direction younger women.

It was a relaxed spot and you could spend a few days here if not in a hurry. If I'd been able to come a day earlier as planned I'd have gone to Isla del Sol for a night, but as it was Sunday I was keen to get to La Paz for the live midget wrestling. Unfortunately, in the event we arrived in La Paz too late for the pickup, but I also wanted to be in La Paz to arrange a trip to the pampas, where apparently you can swim with pink river dolphins and see some of the most densely concentrated biodiversity in the world.



Flights for Monday were full so I had a day to walk around the city and get my bearings for when I'm back. It's the highest capital in the world, at 3,600m, and boasts possibly the world's least eco-friendly buses. Like many South American cities, the orientation is reversed from what we see in the West - the affluent living lower down and the poor neighbourhoods lining the hills. One such area - El Alto - sits up on the plains right above the basin in which La Paz sits. It began life as a slum but has grown efficiently and exponentially to now be an award winning city in its own right, with a population to match the 855,000 of La Paz, which is an incredibly small population for the area each covers.

Bolivia's 2nd highest mountain - Illimani - peeps out at you from beyond some of the streets, and in the late afternoon I walked up one of the northern roads to seek a beer at sunset and take in the view. I walked up.... and up...... and up..... and gradually became aware that I was not in a touristy part of town. I kept on anyway, for a while, but when I passed a bar populated by what looked like a biker gang, staring in disbelief at the gringo walking so far out of town, I figured it was time to head back.