Woman beating - on stage

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I hadn't put this one in with the last entry, so this is just a qick update on my Sunday afternoon in La Paz.

As I hadn't really seen Fli the prevous day, we met up in the afternoon to go to the spectacula (and allegidly world reknown) Cholitas Wrestling. I didn't really know what to expect from this, but we got on the bus, and after about an hours ride zig-zagging through the streets of the vertigo inducing city we arrived at a dodgy enough lookng place.

"When you get off the bus, just go straight in, don't hang around out here" said the bus driver and our tour gude as they ushered us off the bus, neglegting to expand on the statement. Still, with no idea what to expect, we went in.

It was, to briefly describe the arena, what you would expect an indoor fitness grounds built in the 60's on an exceptionally low budget to look like. Breeze block walls were painted in the clip art images of various sportsmen, inclding the archaic football strips with short-shorts pulled high. A vast skylight of semi opaque white corrugated plastic covered most of the ceiling, givng light to perhap the 300 plastic chairs set out around a bright yellw crowd barrier. In the center stood a rather untrustworthy looking boxing ring, illuminated by an ad hoc ring of spòt lights.

Still unsure what was goig to happen, the front of house came out and started whipping most of the crowd up into a frenzy. Not all though, because there were severl people, who, like me, had no idea what he was saying.

Then the first wrestlers came out. They were like american wrestlers who had eaten too much fat food, seen too many years, had their ego's inflated for far too long, and never learnt to act properly. All in spandex. The combination was hilarious! It was all done so tngue in cheek, with the referee occassionally throwing a kick and adding a bt of a plot line to the nights events. After a while, the women came out too, and in true WWE style, at first were (apparently) beaten half to death before making an astonishing come back. Not gonna lie, even though it was acting, this became a little awkwar. Most significantly when one guy actually hit a woman with a peice of wood accidentally too had, drawing blood! (see picture). he ecovered though, and two bull's of women caame out and had at it, a scary spectical if ever there was one.

All in all, the acrobatics were very impressive though, with flips and ives from the top turnbuckle´s as good as the rest of them (esp. when considering my descriptions of them!). We were ushered out again by our guide, just as they were hitting each other with recently frazzled strip lights.

Crazy people.

Great afternoon.

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