Minty fresh

Ooh, it´s been a messy and tiring few days. So tiring and messy that it deserves another ooooh. It´s hard to remember exactly what happened. There was live lady wrestling. Red wine milkshakes. Shaving with toothpaste. A 26-hour bus ride from Bolivia through to Peru. Panties for Kruse with the label ´Stripper´ and the offer of drugs whilst shopping at the supermarket . . . non-stop madness.

In La Paz, on a Sunday afternoon, families like to go to the wrestling. It´s advertised as lady wrestling, which is the reason the foreigners all go, but in reality it´s mostly men in costumes that range from the very amateur through to the rather excellent. Quite fancied the orange and silver outfit one of the guys in the final was wearing, actually.
There were three ladies wrestling. Two were in national costume. Bit weird, but very entertaining. The audience were all very into it, especially the kids, who obviously had yet to work out that it was all fake. Everyone, including the old ladies in the back row, was throwing fruit and empty plastic bottles at the competitors. We were in the front row and had people literally thrown at us a few times. Fake, but it looked a spot painful.

Went out for dinner our last night there and couldn´t translate something on the menu that had red wine listed as an ingredient, so we ordered it. Turned out to be a red wine milkshake. Of course! Rather alarmingly delicious. Red wine and frothy milk. So, so wrong, yet so magical.

Shaving with toothpaste wasn´t on the list of things to do in South America, but I got into the shower and realised that I didn´t have any soap, there wasn´t any soap in the shower and I hadn´t shaved for three weeks. I may have panicked. However, I got a nice, smooth shave and my skin smelled minty fresh for quite some time, so it wasn´t a bad experience at all.

Think have finally worked out what day I am leaving, and it´s two weeks away, so will fit in a whistlestop tour of Ecuador and hopefully at least one beach in Colombia. However, before then I have an 18-hour bus ride up to the border of Peru. These bus rides are beginning to seem perfectly reasonable - the 26 (actually 28) hour one we got off today wasn´t too bad. We watched about seven DVDs, slept a bit, ate a bit, admired the road and the suicidal driving a bit - yeah, heaps`o`fun. Kruse and I were lucky enough to be in the front seats, up the top of the bus. These are often known as the death seats because in a crash you don´t have much of a chance. However, they do give you a very good view of the road. Super fun when the driver decides to overtake on blind corners (national habit) and then oncoming traffic appears.

Now - time for dessert and then to demand Kruse models his new underwear for Ben and myself. The boxer shorts had odd sizings - along with your small, medium and large, you could also get single, double and master. Have yet to quite work out what this means.