After our rather uneventful week in Puno and Copacabana, we decided La Paz would be the place for us to pick up the pace a little rather that lounging around reading, drinking and eating trout cooked every which way you can imagine in the hotel restaurant. We departed Copacabana for our 4 hour journey to La Paz in the early evening of the 14th. Our Bolivia hop bus was oversubscribed, so we were bumped on to a local minibus chartered to carry the overflow, sharing our ride with couples from The Netherlands and the USA as well as having our own guide accompany us.

Copacabana is on a large peninsula jutting north-east in to the eastern end of Lake Titicaca. The land connection is on the Peruvian side of the border and so Copacabana and its surrounding villages are a de-facto exclave of Bolivia, accessible only by crossing a narrow stretch of water in a town called Tiquina about an hour’s drive from Copacabana. The lake here is a few hundred meters wide at most and the low, flat banks provide for a natural crossing point. Rather than a bridge or ferry, here a fleet of large wooden skiffs are used to transport vehicles across. The skiffs have a ramp at one end and a single outboard motor at the other and are large enough to take a single coach or about 3 or 4 cars at a time. Each has a crew of two sailors (I guess that’s what you’d call them, skiffers maybe? Hmm, no, that that sounds like prison slang for someone who provides an unpleasant service), one to operate the outboard which is the only source of power and steerage for the craft, and another to run up and down the skiff preventing collisions with other skiffs by yelling at them and warding them with a long pole.

We arrived in Tiquina after nightfall where the skiffs lack of any lighting only added to the chaotic scene, and also sadly preventing us from getting any good photos. Even by Bolivian standards, this crossing is considered somewhat hairy (and this is the country that has a road called ‘Death Road’), so passengers are off-loaded from their vehicles and ferried across the lake about 20 at a time in small passenger boats. Not the most comfortable things ever; it was the 26^th mode of public transport in South America that I banged my head on whilst entering, but certainly preferable to staying on the bus whilst it traversed the lake.

Re-united with our transport on the other side we continued our journey, arriving in El Alto, La Paz’s neighbour city at about 9pm. The larger, but also younger and considerably poorer of the two city’s which make up the La Paz metropolitan area, El Alto (Spanish for ‘The Heights’) sits on a plateau to the west of La Paz, almost 400m higher than the affluent down-town area which occupies the cluster of valleys that merge below. Looking at the cities from above or on a map, you’d be hard-pressed to say where one ends ant the other begins, but from the ground the boundary is very stark as the cliff drops suddenly and steeply from El Alto down to La Paz. Not only geographical, the boundary between El Alto and La Paz is starkly social and economic and until the cable-cars were built only a few years ago, travel between the two cities was limited to a handful of heavily congested roads.

No such trouble for us arriving so late at night though, and the brief descent from El Alto to La Paz gave us some fantastic views of the city. From the drop off point it was a 30-minute walk, or about a 10-minute taxi ride to our AirBnB. La Paz is a generally safe city for tourists (very safe by South American standards) but the home office website (see Dad, I am checking it!) advises not to wonder around unfamiliar areas of the city at night and not to flag down taxis on the street. Fortunately, our guide was able to phone ahead for a taxi and so we had one waiting for us when we were dropped off. Arriving at our AirBnB we followed the instructions provided to us by the owner and asked for the key from the doorman, only to be greeted by nonchalant shrugs and grunts from the most unhelpful man in all of Bolivia.

At this point, dear reader, I’d like to say that we aren’t the sort of anglophone tourists who expect the rest of the world to speak English, and indeed we have got to the point where even I can muddle through a simple conversation in Spanish and Katy can usually get several sentences in before she has to resort to google translate for assistance. When spoken slowly and clearly with plenty of gesticulation, we’re generally able to follow the gist of what is being said to us in Spanish. This doorman, however, had the most indecipherable accent ever and mumbled quickly as he tried to deal with us as hastily as possible so he could go back to watching Game of Thrones on the lobby TV. Again, we tried to explain who we were and why we were there and again he just mumbled and shrugged leaving us none the wiser. Tired and stressed and unable to get our phones to download data in order to contact the AirBnB host we were starting to get quite worked up, the doorman eventually pulled out a notebook with a telephone number for a woman called ‘Gabriella’ in it. The number however didn’t include the dialling code for Bolivia and when we tied to ask the doorman for it, he just looked at us bemused and said we didn’t need it. We explained that we did need it as our phones were UK registered but again, he just shrugged and went back to watching Game of Thrones.

After about 10 minutes of badgering him and frantically trying to think up an alternate plan the doorman finally got fed up enough to phone the number for Gabriella himself and pass us the phone. Turns out she was the woman who looks after the apartment for the owner and was up in the flat the whole time waiting for us. In retrospect, that’s probably what the doorman had said to us right at the start. Stupid Gringo’s. It was about 10:45 when we finally got in to the flat, a gorgeous 2-bedroom apartment on the 7^th floor with views in 3 directions across the city with one of the cable car lines running right outside our window. The apartment had a tasteful monochromatic decor and was fitted out with all the mod-cons. A smart TV in every room, a nicely fitted out kitchenette, a small bar with a few complimentary drinks, glittery black bathroom fittings (the internal designer was presumably getting a little carried away by this point) and the comfiest bed in all South America.

Exhausted, Katy took herself off to bed whilst I stayed up for a bit to indulge in some Netflix and poured myself a glass from the complimentary bottle of white wine in the drink’s cabinet. It turned out to be a corked desert wine, but I guess it’s the thought that counts. Half an hour in to an episode of The Expanse I noticed myself swaying gently on the sofa, which was strange as I really didn’t think the unpleasant glass of wine wasn’t that strong. A moment later the bedroom door started rattling and I noticed that the rail holding the blind in the kitchen was rocking back and forth and clattering in to the window. Earthquake! Within a second of me working out what was happening the swaying stopped and the building settled down. Like any millennial faced with an alarming situation they don’t fully understand, I quickly turned to Google for information and advice on what to do. Should I stay put? Should I get Katy up and leave the building? Where there likely to be more, stronger quakes coming? Fortunately the answer to all 3 of these questions turned out to be no, what I felt were merely the tremors from a quake near Cochabamba about 200 miles south east of La Paz. Relief could reflexively become excitement at the fact that this was the first time in my life that I’d experienced an earthquake.

The following morning, we ventured to down-town La Paz to have some breakfast and to visit the offices of the mountain biking company whom we had chosen to take us down Death Road. This meant making use of the cities cable car network ‘Mi Teleferico’ which had been constructed over the last 6 years or so and to which new lines were still being added, the most recent of which opened only a few days before our arrival. The network now consists of 10 different lines connecting over 30 stations across La Paz and El Alto and constitute the world’s largest cable car network. Cable Cars aren’t unusual in mountainous south-American cities -Rio De Janeiro being perhaps the most famous example- as they’re relatively cheap to construct and far more suited to the terrain that other mass-transit systems. La Paz is unique though in that it is the first city to use them as the primary public transport system, rather than to supplement other systems like subways or trams.

Taking the White Line from Plaza Triangular two blocks down from our AirBnB, we paid our 5 Bolivianos each (about 55p) to the friendly ticket booth operator and headed through the gates,  guided all the way by the numerous helpful and cheerful members of staff up to the platform, and in to one of the cars which whisked us up out of the station. The line took us up along the main street past our apartment building and up to the large square at the top of the road where we transferred to the Orange line. This line took us west, scending over the steep northern suburbs of La Paz and down towards the central station in the next valley. The views from the cable car are fantastic and give a great view of the whole city. The journey time, which would have been half an hour on foot and about the same by taxi in the heavy traffic was cut down to about 15 minutes. Clean, smooth, intuitive and very cheap, we could have happily spent a day just bombing around La Paz on the cable cars. Unlike the Tube or even street level transit, they give you a great sense of the geography of the city and allow you to very easily familiarise yourself with the city’s layout. Furthermore, the fact that the cars on each line are different colours means that from the ground it’s very easy to orient yourself based on what coloured cars you can see.

Arriving at the central station we took a short walk down the hill to the Belen and San Pedro districts of La Paz, an area consisting of about 10 city blocks just off the main arterial highway and that contains the bulk of the tourist attractions, hotels and restaurants. Down Town La Paz is a bustling, vibrant and as fast-paced as any European capital The wider streets are lined with trees, street merchants and high-rise buildings with western style (but notably not western branded) shops and restaurants in their lobbies whilst the narrower side streets are filled with every manor of business you can conceive of, from cobblers and furniture makers to language schools and cement mixer merchants. With its cool climate, the city has a surprisingly familiar vibe; On the main streets surrounded by commuters and towering buildings you could easily be in central London or New York, albeit with even more chaotic traffic. We had breakfast at the highly recommended Carrot Tree restaurant where our waiter Johnny, who spoke near perfect English with a strong US accent, sold us on the Cholitas Wrestling experience they offer for the coming Sunday. A short walk through the backstreets with their myriad tourist shops brought us to the offices of Gravity, the most highly recommended tour company for cycling down Death Road. If we’re going to do something this stupid, do it with the best.

Our business for the day concluded, we meandered our way down to the Celeste Cable Car Line and headed south through the cities large Central Park which follows a deep canyon leading from the centre to the south-west of the city. The cable car follows a route under the many bridges which connect the two halves of the city dissected by the park, to a pair of stations flanking the road where we changed on to the southern end of the white line. One stop up and we were back where we started.

Saturday rolled in and we booked ourselves in for a walking tour around down-town La Paz starting from San Pedro Square, adjacent to which stands the infamous San Pedro Prison; a uniquely bizarre prison operated by the inmates where the families of long-term inmates will often voluntarily reside alongside them. The prison has a fully functional(ish) internal economy; prisoners are not assigned cells or provided food or other amenities, but rather must provide goods and services and trade for the things they need and rent their cells. The bulk of the cashflow in to the prison comes, not massively surprisingly, from cocaine production and the inmates are supposed by those in the know (read: not me) to produce the finest in the world. The guards provide a perimeter to keep inmates in, taking a sizeable cut of the cocaine and other illicit revenues, but beyond that the inside is a self-regulating free-for-all which is, by all accounts, a remarkably safe place to be, provided you know the right people to slip a few hundred Bolivianos to. The prison use to allow tourists inside for tours (this was one of the services provided by the inmates in order to earn their keep) but in recent years such tours would end with tourists being marched by the guards around the numerous ATM’s in the area being made to empty the contents of their bank accounts to pay to be ‘released’.

Whilst waiting in San Pedro Plaza for our walking tour to start we began eavesdropping on a small group of tourists circled around a short, skinny man in dishevelled clothing and heavily worn sandals. The man spoke with a thick US accent and barely stood still as he gave an erratic, flamboyant and somewhat unhinged regaling of stories about the prison. For a while, it was unclear whether this was an actual tour or whether these were just some unfortunate tourists cornered by a local lunatic, too polite (or too alarmed) to make their excuses and leave. It transpired later that the man in question was ‘Crazy Dave’ An American citizen and something of a local legend who spent over 17 years inside the prison for attempting to smuggle 2.5 kilos of cocaine out of Bolivia and now earns his keep telling tourists his story outside the prison grounds. As entertaining as this all was, there was something rather pitiable about the scene of a man ravaged by drug addiction and prison, who had lost contact with his wife and children and had ended up here, reliving it all as entertainment to make a living. There was an unsettling midnight-express undertone to his performance and whilst the thought did cross our minds that it might be interesting to spend half a day following him around and hearing his stories, there was probably better ways to find out about the inner workings of the prison.

The guide for our walking tour was the much more down to earth and level-headed Marisol of Red Cap Tours. Unlike in most of the cities we’ve visited where we make a point of seeking our free walking tours, operators in Bolivia are forbidden from offering services for free, so they charge the minimum of 20 Bolivianos (about £2.20) upfront and ask for tips at the end. After a somewhat more objective overview of the prison and some tips on navigating the hectic traffic in La Paz (‘just ignore the traffic lights, their just decorative’) Marisol lead us up to a Rodriguez Market, a large market used by locals that, on weekends, spills out in to the neighbouring roads for several blocks.

Somewhere in the warren of stalls and tarpaulin Marisol found a quieter spot talk to us about the history of Lap Paz and the Aymara people, the largest of the over 30 ethnic groups native to Bolivia and by far the most prevalent in La Paz and the surrounding area. The City, like many in this part of the world, has roots that go back to the Incans. Laja, as it was then, sat on the intersection of several major Incan trading routes before the Spanish arrived and established La Paz in 1548. La Paz was often a troublesome city for the Spanish to control, being the site of many revolutions and sieges during the Hispanic period. In 1809 the city declared its independence from Spain, being amongst the first places in South America to do so. The rest of Bolivia would follow suit in 1825 and since then La Paz has functioned as the seat of government and de facto capital, with Sucre recognised as the constitutional capital.

Our tour continued down to Plaza Murillo, the square around which sits the presidential palace and the congress and site of many of the most pivotal chapters in Bolivia’s history. Marisol told us of the numerous uprisings and revolts that have seen the Plaza be their epicentre over the years as well as giving us our first insights in to contemporary Bolivian politics. In 2009 President Evo Morales, the first president of ethnically Bolivian (Aymara) descent ushered in a new constitution for the country, changing its name officially to the ‘Plurinational State of Bolivia’ to recognise its diverse and multi-ethnic heritage. Morales has adopted notably anti-globalisation and anti-western policies (hence the presence of western style business but lack of western brands in the country, with the notable exception of Coca Cola, which is seemingly bloody everywhere) and has pushed an agenda of nationalisation and fighting corruption (juries out on his success here) as well as investing heavily in infrastructure (Such as the cable cars, so that’s a big point in his approval column). Whilst a divisive and polarising figure within the country, it can’t be overlooked that since his presidency began in 2005, the country has enjoyed a level of economic stability and prosperity unparalleled in its 200-year history. Tellingly of the slightly darker side of contemporary politics in Bolivia though, Marisol told us that she would be saving some of her more controversial thoughts on Evo Morales until we were in a private place and no longer in earshot of the police outside the presidential palace.

After a short stop in another market for some fresh fruit juice and a stop outside San Francisco church (Another Bloody Church) Marisol lead us to a bar a few blocks down from the start of our tour in San Pedro. Here we were each provided with a shot of Singani, the national liquor, mixed with Orange Juice. Singani is a hard flavour to describe, it’s not that much like anything I’ve tried before. There’s a hint of Ouzo to it, but beyond that it’s a rather unique flavour. In the privacy of this bar Marisol felt more at ease to discuss the more negative aspects of Evo Morales presidency, most notably how he had bent the rules of his own constitution to give himself a 3^rd term (where he should be limited to 2) and is now lining up a referendum to allow himself a 4^th. Morales has also concentrated a lot of power in the executive branch and become increasingly influential in setting media narratives and agendas throughout the country. Around La Paz his face is commonplace on adverts and billboards and his personal banner adorns the side of every cable car carriage. There are the trappings of a dictator and a cult of personality in the making here and although he shouldn’t be able to run for a fourth term later this year, lamentably Marisol suspects that he will, and that he’ll win, largely as a consequence of the alternatives being even worse. Marisol also told us of bad policies he has enacted and bizarre statements he has made such as claiming that eating chicken makes you gay as well as, more concerningly, being an outspoken supporter of Maduro in Venezuela.

Our tour concluded, we retired again to our apartment and looked forward to our leisurely Sunday morning and the evening’s entertainment, the Cholitas Wrestling we’d signed up for back at The Carrot Tree. We weren’t totally sure what we had got ourselves in for, but we would soon find out.

Late afternoon Sunday then and we headed off to the rendezvous point for the Cholitas Wresting a short walk from our apartment. Our bus (comically names ‘Jesus Team’) meandered around the streets for half and hour or so picking up Gringos before heading up to El Alto. On the way our guide laid down the ground-rules for our visit. No glass bottles in the arena, no alcohol, no videoing the wrestlers and no throwing things at the wrestlers as they will retaliate, and you won’t like it…Ok… (For the record, once we arrived, beer was being sold, the complimentary drink we were provided was Coke in a glass bottle and there was absolutely no enforcement of the ‘no videoing rule’).

Arriving at the arena we found ourselves in a semi-enclosed basketball court, a wrestling ring with an entrance ramp coming off the wall on the far side and a concrete stand opposite about half filled with locals and a few tourists. Around the ring, separated only by a metal crowd-control fence was about 3 or 4 rows of plastic ‘VIP’ seats which we were invited to sit in. All in all the audience was about 50/50 locals and tourists. It’s not totally clear if this event was set up for the tourists and the locals started tagging along, or vice-versa, but it seems to have genuine appeal to both audiences now.

Not long after we arrived, the lights came up, the music started and a Spanish announcer using a PA system that distorted his voice to the point where it was completely unintelligible began excitedly whipping the crowd’s energy up. Although we couldn’t understand a word being said, the use of tone and elongated vowels were unmistakeable as introductions and two male wrestlers came out from the behind the curtain at the top of the ramp and made their way down the entrance ramp to the ring. According to our guide the men go first because they aren’t important, the Cholitas are the real stars! After the wrestlers were introduced the referee came out,  a portly middle aged man all in black, effeminately dancing around the ring and goading the crowd to waves of boos and hisses. Evidently this referee has prior form. The fight started with the Referee overtly siding with the antagonist, a man dressed like the gimp from Pulp Fiction, against the hero, a man in a red Mexican Wrestlers mask and wearing non-specific oriental style garb and shouting ‘HI-YA’ as he performed flying kicks and chops. The wrestling style was a mix of WWE and Mexican wrestling and, to their credit, the wrestlers were very good, selling the punches and falls and performing acrobatic jumps and slams off the ropes and turnbuckles. The fight ebbed and flowed and the referees prolonged counts on the protagonists pins suitably rousing the crowed before eventually, as form would dictate in any staged event, the hero won, and the referee and the villain slunk away.

Next up were the Cholitas! Bit of background; the Cholitas are the women of the Aymara and Quechua communities in Bolivia who wear the traditional garb of broad, multi-layered colourful skirts, knitted cardigans and small bowler hats*. Until Morales came to power, the Cholitas were a marginalised underclass in Bolivian society, but in recent years they have seen their social and economic status grow substantially, and now they are free to put on wrestling shows for the delight of locals and tourists alike… Perhaps it’s best not to try and make sense of all of this…

*The small bowler hats weren’t originally part of the traditional attire, apparently the hats were intended for the British railway workers who came over to Bolivia during the late 19^th century to construct the nations railway network. The hats ordered were way too small for the British engineers to wear however, so the distributor, stuck with thousands of useless hats, manged to convince the local women to start wearing them and the fashion stuck, now forming part of the Cholitas iconic appearance.

The first match was between two sets of young women in a sort of tag-team match. At least that was how it started. The match, again overseen by the faux-camp referee of dubious integrity, quickly spilled out and in to the space around the ring and then over the barriers and in to the crowd, much to the visible surprise of the front row of tourists who suddenly found themselves with Cholitas being hurled into their laps, and the shrieking delight of the locals who had seen this all before. From there the room descended in to total chaos. The wrestlers started grabbing the drinks cans of audience members and emptying their contents on to each-others heads, sometimes taking a mouth-full and spraying it in to the crowds as well. The locals started pelting the villains with popcorn and chastising them. In turn, the villains ventured further in to the crowd to target with drinks bottles the crowd members who challenged them. All the while the music blared, the lights flashed, the crowd booed and cheered, and the announcer excitedly shouted a running commentary that surely now nobody could make any sense of. The Referee then got involved, chasing the wrestlers around the ring, whipping them with some cord he’d acquired from somewhere until the fight eventually worked its way back in to the ring and the heroes finally turned the match around and won, to the ecstatic delight of the crowd.

Soon after that match the music pipped up again and an older cholita and a large male wrestler in a Mexican mask and tight-fitting spandex made their way out to the ring. They started by taking the microphone from the announcer and addressing the crowd before the introduction of their opponents. Before the opponents could enter the ring though, one of the younger cholitas from the previous fight began to woo the male wrestler, much to the chagrin of the older female cholita and the hissing disapproval of the crowd. She chased away the younger cholita away before proceeding to punish the male wrestler for his perceived infidelity, throwing him out of the ring and breaking a plastic chair over his head. This exchange carried on, interwoven with impassioned exchanges on the microphone between the warring parties. At one point, another male wrestler appeared, seemingly a love interest of the younger cholita. He shouted a few things then disappeared again before finally the older male wrestler turned on the young cholita to the delight of the older cholita and the crowd, pinning her in the ring and winning a match that, from what I could work out, had never even started.

The last fight of the evening was between 2 cholitas and 2 men dressed as flys. Yes. As flys. They even squatted and bounced around as if they were flys and used their hands to wash their fake compound eyes. By this point we had completely given up trying to work out what the hell was going on. The whole night had been very, very surreal and totally ridiculous, but thoroughly entertaining. Before leaving we took advantage of the opportunity to take a photo with the Chlitas, who had fortunately put their differences aside long enough to allow us to take some pictures.

Boy that was a long one. On to part 2 then!