Day 9 - Let's Get Ready to Rumble...
Today was split into 2 distinct parts: a trip to the Zoo and a cultural experience watching the Luche Libre (wrestling Mexican style) live. Normally I would write chronologically however given the wonderful and bizarre entertainment that Luche Libre is I will start there.
If Australian Rules Football and Rugby League are the working people's sport of Australia then Luche Libre is certainly the working people's sport of Mexico. If ever you want to get amongst the normal folk of Mexico and really experience the sounds, sights and smells of the culture then a must is the Luche Libre. As Jacqui was feeling tired, Talia, Zac and I were driven to the event by Sylvie's driver Octavio.
The first experience was buying tickets whereby scalping is an acceptable pastime and appears also to be the only way to get the best seats in the stadium. Whilst standing in line for tickets, we were approached by multiple scalpers one of which Octavio decided to barter with. Given he spoke Spanish and little English, the first challenge was accepting that the tickets would be genuine. After much deliberation, we handed over the 300 pesos and proceeded to the security check to ensure we were not carrying any weapons etc.
It appeared that the tickets were legit as they scanned correctly at the gate where we were then escorted to our seats which were right beside the stage and ramp that lead into the ring. This lead to the first concern as our seats were occupied. What we soon found out is that people will just sit in the best seats even if they do not have the tickets for them. The occupiers looked up, admitted they had been busted and moved onto the next best seats available. Then my heart sank again as a couple approached us with tickets that appeared to be for the same seats. Given we did not speak Spanish, this was looking like an issue. A quick inspection of all tickets revealed same seats but different rows. Their seats had also been occupied by squatters so the squatters quickly exited and all were happy.
The other thing about the seating is that the stadium appeared to be split into 2 halves: the baddies and the goodies. This then created a South American Soccer style crowd whereby one half was constantly singing and chanting for the baddies whilst the other half attempted to out sing and out chant the other side by chanting for the goodies. For the record, and not by choice, we sat on the side supporting the baddies. The only difference to above was when the "handsome" wrestlers came out and stripped off all the ladies in the crowd started to cheer whilst the men in the crowd waited for the 5 scantily clad, well endowed ringside females to come out to start to cheer and wolf whistle.
Now for those of you who know the WWE, you will be familiar with the wrestling rules employed in wrestling entertainment. In Mexico, the rules appeared to be different and somewhat flexible. First of all, the wrestling matches were 3 man tag team events over 3 rounds. This led to the first piece of fixed entertainment whereby each team won a round each to ensure the fight came down to the 3rd and final round. The other piece was when someone was thrown out of the ring, then this constituted a tag and another team member could come into the ring and commence wrestling. The other twist was dependant on whether it was the teams turn to win the round, it often ended up with 1 against 3 whilst the victims 2 team mates appeared to be resting on the side line watching their mate being beat up on.
As per all wrestling the names of the wrestlers are always intriguing and none more so than in Mexico. With names like El Terrible, El Sabre and Fabio however our 2 favourites were Maximo and El Mascara. These need some explanation. Maximo was 5' 6" and weighed around 90kg (solid and not fat) with a pink mohawk, wearing a pink leotard and basically was the token homosexual wrestler (you need to understand political correctness is still a long way off in Mexico). He spent the night prancing around and attempting to "sexually" intimidate his opponents by rubbing them in places where they were not comfortable as well as trying to steal the occasional peck on the cheek. This resulted in many laughs. As for El Mascara (which in Spanish means to wear a mask) did not help his image by wearing pink tights and a pink mask. Given mascara has a different connotation in English, this was not a good look - however the ladies seemed to love him.
If entertainment is what you are after then entertainment is what you get. Take away the slapping of the hands to make loud sounds when pretending to hit or kick someone, these are genuine athletes who are willing to throw themselves around and out of the ring to keep the crowd entertained. On many occasions, a wrestler would perform a flying leap either over the ropes or through the ropes to land on an opponent outside of the ring and then end up landing somewhere in the first 3 rows of the crowd. Combine this with the constant cheering, chanting and verbal abuses that are thrown around by the crowd, the continual line of people selling tacos, nachos, drinks and merchandise you are guaranteed to have well and truly got your money worth. We left the event full of smiles and great stories and would highly recommend that any visitors to Mexico make this a must see activity on their itinerary.
As for the morning activities, we decided to stroll into the park and walk around the Mexico Zoo. The first thing is that the Zoo is free to enter with the only areas requiring payment are the butterfly/insect enclosure and the snake enclosure. Given we spent nearly 4 hours walking around the zoo, this was certainly great value. The zoo has a wide range of animals a lot of which we do not have in the Melbourne or even Australian Zoos so it was good to get up close with animals from this part of the world. Although the Zoo is well laid out, some of the enclosures are not appropriate for the types of animals that are held there whereas some enclosures are really well appointed and suited. From an Australian perspective there were grey wallabies, red kangaroos, emus and carpet pythons.
A couple of the highlights were the raptor aviaries which contained a variety of eagles, hawks, falcons and 2 varieties of condors which was pretty cool and the butterfly/insect enclosure where the kids had a chance to get hands on experience with some of the exotic insects. This leads onto the photo's below where Zac had the chance to handle an African cockroach, an Argentinian Tarantula and a Black Scorpion. He was amazingly brave although clearly nervous and at no time flinched when handling the differing creatures. I am sure this is something he will remember for a long time. The other good part is he no longer has the opportunity to squeal the next time he sees a tiny spider in the toilet as what he has handled was much bigger and certainly more dangerous.
If Australian Rules Football and Rugby League are the working people's sport of Australia then Luche Libre is certainly the working people's sport of Mexico. If ever you want to get amongst the normal folk of Mexico and really experience the sounds, sights and smells of the culture then a must is the Luche Libre. As Jacqui was feeling tired, Talia, Zac and I were driven to the event by Sylvie's driver Octavio.
The first experience was buying tickets whereby scalping is an acceptable pastime and appears also to be the only way to get the best seats in the stadium. Whilst standing in line for tickets, we were approached by multiple scalpers one of which Octavio decided to barter with. Given he spoke Spanish and little English, the first challenge was accepting that the tickets would be genuine. After much deliberation, we handed over the 300 pesos and proceeded to the security check to ensure we were not carrying any weapons etc.
It appeared that the tickets were legit as they scanned correctly at the gate where we were then escorted to our seats which were right beside the stage and ramp that lead into the ring. This lead to the first concern as our seats were occupied. What we soon found out is that people will just sit in the best seats even if they do not have the tickets for them. The occupiers looked up, admitted they had been busted and moved onto the next best seats available. Then my heart sank again as a couple approached us with tickets that appeared to be for the same seats. Given we did not speak Spanish, this was looking like an issue. A quick inspection of all tickets revealed same seats but different rows. Their seats had also been occupied by squatters so the squatters quickly exited and all were happy.
The other thing about the seating is that the stadium appeared to be split into 2 halves: the baddies and the goodies. This then created a South American Soccer style crowd whereby one half was constantly singing and chanting for the baddies whilst the other half attempted to out sing and out chant the other side by chanting for the goodies. For the record, and not by choice, we sat on the side supporting the baddies. The only difference to above was when the "handsome" wrestlers came out and stripped off all the ladies in the crowd started to cheer whilst the men in the crowd waited for the 5 scantily clad, well endowed ringside females to come out to start to cheer and wolf whistle.
Now for those of you who know the WWE, you will be familiar with the wrestling rules employed in wrestling entertainment. In Mexico, the rules appeared to be different and somewhat flexible. First of all, the wrestling matches were 3 man tag team events over 3 rounds. This led to the first piece of fixed entertainment whereby each team won a round each to ensure the fight came down to the 3rd and final round. The other piece was when someone was thrown out of the ring, then this constituted a tag and another team member could come into the ring and commence wrestling. The other twist was dependant on whether it was the teams turn to win the round, it often ended up with 1 against 3 whilst the victims 2 team mates appeared to be resting on the side line watching their mate being beat up on.
As per all wrestling the names of the wrestlers are always intriguing and none more so than in Mexico. With names like El Terrible, El Sabre and Fabio however our 2 favourites were Maximo and El Mascara. These need some explanation. Maximo was 5' 6" and weighed around 90kg (solid and not fat) with a pink mohawk, wearing a pink leotard and basically was the token homosexual wrestler (you need to understand political correctness is still a long way off in Mexico). He spent the night prancing around and attempting to "sexually" intimidate his opponents by rubbing them in places where they were not comfortable as well as trying to steal the occasional peck on the cheek. This resulted in many laughs. As for El Mascara (which in Spanish means to wear a mask) did not help his image by wearing pink tights and a pink mask. Given mascara has a different connotation in English, this was not a good look - however the ladies seemed to love him.
If entertainment is what you are after then entertainment is what you get. Take away the slapping of the hands to make loud sounds when pretending to hit or kick someone, these are genuine athletes who are willing to throw themselves around and out of the ring to keep the crowd entertained. On many occasions, a wrestler would perform a flying leap either over the ropes or through the ropes to land on an opponent outside of the ring and then end up landing somewhere in the first 3 rows of the crowd. Combine this with the constant cheering, chanting and verbal abuses that are thrown around by the crowd, the continual line of people selling tacos, nachos, drinks and merchandise you are guaranteed to have well and truly got your money worth. We left the event full of smiles and great stories and would highly recommend that any visitors to Mexico make this a must see activity on their itinerary.
As for the morning activities, we decided to stroll into the park and walk around the Mexico Zoo. The first thing is that the Zoo is free to enter with the only areas requiring payment are the butterfly/insect enclosure and the snake enclosure. Given we spent nearly 4 hours walking around the zoo, this was certainly great value. The zoo has a wide range of animals a lot of which we do not have in the Melbourne or even Australian Zoos so it was good to get up close with animals from this part of the world. Although the Zoo is well laid out, some of the enclosures are not appropriate for the types of animals that are held there whereas some enclosures are really well appointed and suited. From an Australian perspective there were grey wallabies, red kangaroos, emus and carpet pythons.
A couple of the highlights were the raptor aviaries which contained a variety of eagles, hawks, falcons and 2 varieties of condors which was pretty cool and the butterfly/insect enclosure where the kids had a chance to get hands on experience with some of the exotic insects. This leads onto the photo's below where Zac had the chance to handle an African cockroach, an Argentinian Tarantula and a Black Scorpion. He was amazingly brave although clearly nervous and at no time flinched when handling the differing creatures. I am sure this is something he will remember for a long time. The other good part is he no longer has the opportunity to squeal the next time he sees a tiny spider in the toilet as what he has handled was much bigger and certainly more dangerous.
