La Paz - Valleys and Wrestling

After an adrenaline-filled day, Maria and I decided to explore more of La Paz or, more specifically, its surroundings. For that, we hopped into a taxi to take us to the Valle de las Animas - or the Valley of the Souls.

The interesting bit about the valley is that the notion of tourism has not yet arrived there, even though it is a gorgeous place. There is no official entrance, instead there are multiple paths and starting points that are all rather confusing. It's incredible that the city is not collecting any entrance fees or that there are no people selling snacks or drinks. It made it feel much more remote.

Anyway, after getting lost at first, we walked into the valley, admiring the towering rock formations above us. The thin and tall rocks are basically shaped like a cone at the top, which gives the valley its name as it is believed that souls of the people leave the valley from the peak of those rocks. Beautiful story. Walking slightly uphill was not physically demanding, but we were definitely out of breath or taking it slow as we were above 4000m at this point.

We followed a path along for a good hour and a bit, before resting, taking countless photos and simply admiring the tranquility of this place. We also saw a group of locals disappear behind some rocks and were wondering what they were doing up there. Maybe farming, camping, but we couldn't figure it out. Anyway, good luck to them.

After getting back to the hostel, we did not have much time, as we were preparing for our last activity in La Paz: watching Cholitas wrestle. Cholitas are women dressed in traditional clothing and can be seen all over La Paz/Bolivia - esp at markets where they sell their wares. The Cholitas wrestling is not only an interesting show that both tourists and locals enjoy watching, but is an empowerment to the women and symbolises its strength. It is a lot of fun as well.

So we bought some snacks and beers, sat down and let the 'fighting' begin. It had started with some men wrestling to warm up the crowd in the room, before the Cholitas came out. All I can say is that the show was well worth the money. Plus, we really really got into it, supporting a Cholita aptly called Maria in her fight, rooting for her, screaming our lungs out to encourage her to absolutely destroy her opponent and take the win - unfortunately she lost, but that was clearly due to an unfair referee decision. We had a group of 3-4 people in our corner who were all rooting for her and that made it a lot more fun than just sitting there and watching it in silence. We didn't care what the other tourists thought about us. Probably thought we had lost it.

After the last fight and when we were just about to leave, absolute mayhem broke out. All of a sudden a Cholita and the men from the first fight came on stage, all fighting each other. Then it was only the men and they did not care about the stage, but beat each other up all over the room. It was complete chaos for a solid 6-7 minutes. Things were flying everywhere and even the locals spectators were throwing things at the fighters. We absolutely loved it!

But yeah, that was it for La Paz. For a big city, I really enjoyed my time here and I think Maria did, too. Death Road was an absolute highlight. None of us suffered from high altitude sickness, which was good. La Paz is not a 'beautiful' city in itself, as houses are all brown and never painted (in Bolivia you save taxes if you don't finish your house). What enhanced our experience as well was the host of our hostel, Oscar, who was the nicest guy in Bolivia and organised literally everything for us. Such a great character.Læs mere