City tour, Cholitas wrestling and El Alto market

Our first meeting of the day is in front of Bolivia most famous prison on Plaza Sucre. It’s also the starting point of Red Cap City Walking tour that we have booked for this morning.
There we meet Max our guide for the morning (and as it turned out the whole day! ). A very nice fellow which first starts by giving us a complete story of how this self-managed prison where inmates can live with their families came about. It’s quite fascinating to hear that in a building that was a monastery, then a military building was then converted into a prison meant for 300 persons. Today there are 3000 people living inside. Once upon a time there were tourists who could book a tour and stay one night, this was all stopped after many incidents happened.

Once this stop was done, we walked through the Sunday fresh market and Max explained us about the main stapples of Bolivian food and the special relationship that you have with your vendors. He continued with explanations on the traditional Cholita garment ( the big puffy skirt and the hat ). That was particularly interesting.

The third stop was the witch market, which to be honest is more a souvenir for tourist street now. It’s cute, because it has a lot of decorations and is almost entirely pedestrian. But there are hardly any more of the lama fetuses or weird plants on displays. The highlight of this part of the walking tour are the massive parades that are all around the city rehearsing for next week end. We walked along a beautiful one with hundreds of Cholitas in pink dresses followed by gold gilded orchestra and further male dancers.

Right after the witch market, Max did spend a good moment explaining us the Mesas, or offering, that are traditionally maybe by Aymara people in Bolivia. Most ingredients can be bought at the witch market and range from just herbs, candies or various colorful papers to animal fetuses. We learned quite a lot on this section.
Two more stops to go on the walking tour and the next one is San Francisco church. It’s a central part of downtown, most pick up and drop off and thousands of minibuses are around there. We finally have some more content about this monument we have been in front of already a few times.

The church was built by the Spanish on top of sacred grounds in the intend to convert the indigenous people. There are on the very ornate façade a lot of reference to Pachamama to create syncretism. 

After picking at all the details of the church from outside we continue through a couple of market and pedestrian streets around the square to reach the last stop and another important square, called Plaza Murillo. Here there are the parliament and the presidential palace. Max shares more about modern history and the various important events that took place on this square – including violent riots. We can still see bullet holes on some of the building and lampposts.

The tour ends a little after 1pm and we had a really good dose of fun and educational information. Max is an excellent story teller. But we have another tour booked with Red Cap to visit El Alto and see the cholita wrestling starting at 2pm. Ends up that Max is also our tour guide for the afternoon. We leave him answering other travelers questions and head towards the other starting point, which is a good 15min walk from where we ended.

We randomly chose a restaurant around the meeting point called Cebichon. It serves Peruvian ceviche and some seafood fried rice. And believe me, having lived in the lands of Nasi Goreng – this fried rice was the best I have ever had. The Ceviche was exceptional, I can’t wait to eat more of those in Peru! And since it really didn’t look like much from the outside, it was an excellent surprise at a quite affordable price.

We barely finish our meal that it’s time to meet Max again and the new walking group. The program this afternoon is to ride the teleferico to the Cemetery, then further up to El alto the large city on top of La Paz, where on Sunday you have the largest flea market of Latin America. We end the day with Cholita wrestling show.

With such a long program, we start quite quickly with a quick minibus ride to the main station of the teleferico and get to the cemetery. La Paz public cemetery is the largest of the country and host a street art festival every few years. Each section has walls covered in beautiful creations. All of them are full of meaning and relates to Bolivian’s funerary tradition or relationship with death.

Through these arts, Max explains the various customs and vision of death and how Bolivians care for their dead. There is also a good deal of superstitions and ancient traditions related to Pachamama. 

We walk back to the teleferico, and on this ride we pass above the shanty town that has been renovated with bright colors (similar to the rainbow village in Malang, Indonesia). From El Alto, the view of La Paz and the valley below is pretty awesome. Max points at us the various peaks that we can see on the horizon and shares more stories about the creation of La Paz.

The walk through the massive flea market is pretty chaotic as they is a big crowd and we have to keep track of the group and guide to not get lost. It’s an array of everything you can think of: food, car parts, electronics, clothes, gifts, gadgets and more. It’s every Sunday.

After walking at a fairly brisk pace through the maze, we reach the local witch market, which is much bigger than the one downtown and definitely the real deal. Here a lot of weird desiccated animals are hanging in front of shops and stalls with all the herbs and mesas you can think of. It ends on a street where the stalls and small cabins of the shamans are. Max gives us instructions on how to behave and be respectful before walking through the street to its end. There he pauses and partake some more of his knowledge on mesas and the role of shamans in Bolivians daily life.

Apparently, we are already late to the Cholita wrestling show. We hustle there very quickly ( it was a few blocks away ) and after greeting our guide goodbye we take a seat to see the show.

I have never seen any fighting match before, and these of course are pretty fake with a scenario. It’s very funny though and the Cholitas can do everything. From jumping the ropes, interacting with the public, bring the fight outside the ring. There is a lot of “ahhh”, “booo” and laught. They perform a good deal of acrobatics, manhandling and hair pulling. It’s very entertaining and we both enjoy it.

The day ends pretty late, the bus drives us back to San Francisco church by 8pm. We are at our apartment 15min later and by 9pm, we have eaten and are ready to call it a day.