After having a few drinks with some friends in the Plaza de la Constitucion, it was time to go back and get ready for the night’s activities. Those activities were to include street food, rasslin’ and drinking, so a good time was expected.
Most of the group headed out to Lucha Libre in Puebla. Lucha libre, as you know if you’ve ever watched Telemundo, is Mexican professional wrestling. But before heading into the event, we needed to get some dinner, so we stopped at a local street vendor to get some food. At the stand, the woman behind the grill was making cemita pueblas (if I’m not mistaken, but I may be), Mexican sandwiches commonly cooked by street vendors here. The most popular sandwich appeared to be the milanesa sandwiches on bread, but I opted for chorizo on tortillas because I do love me some chorizo. The sandwich/taco came with chorizo, quesillo, potatoes and cactus. There may have been other things on it as well, but that’s primarily what I recall. After doing my happy dance, I scarfed down the sandwich and moved on.
Across the street was the stadium for the Lucha Libre. In Puebla, I understand that the atmosphere at the event is much more mild than it is in Mexico City, but that everything is much more intimate in Puebla because it is held in a tiny arena. About half (seven) of us bought tickets for the close-up section of the stadium and we got seats four rows from the ring. After entering the arena, but before we had even gotten to our seats, we had been stopped by a vendor to buy beer. She didn’t have change for a 100-peso note, so I had to get my change in more beer. Already, I was beginning to suspect it was going to be a long, but good, night.
The wrestling show was a lot of fun and it was great to sit so close to the action. The action wasn’t significantly different from the action at an American wrestling match. Lots of jumps from the top ropes and people being thrown around the ring and commotion on the floor outside of the ring. There were crowd favorites and one thing that I found interesting is that fans of either wrestler or teams of wrestlers would sit on either side of the stadium in the upper decks. The wrestlers would play to their audience and insult the other side of the room. It was odd for me to see wrestlers standing on the top ropes and flipping off the other side’s fans. Do we get away with that in the United States? (I’ve only been once in the U.S. and that was over twenty-five years ago, so I don’t remember.) Anyway, there was also a hell of a lot of beer, which made it that much more fun.
After wrestling, the downstairs group decided to go to a tequila bar. As you can imagine, there was a lot more beer and . . . wait for it . . . tequila. I had a shot of tequila and told the rest of the group that it would be “just this once.” I told them this for all six or seven of my shots if I remember correctly. I also recall dancing more than I have in a long, long time – perhaps the longest I’ve ever danced without knocking somebody down and stepping on her. We decided to stay until the tour leader broke his record of longest time at this bar with a group, which was 4:30 am. We left at 4:32, but then decided to re-enter. Don’t ask me why. (Incidentally, the photo for this paragraph is from the trough in the men's room at the bar. Like everything I've encountered in Mexico, it's full of limes. I found that interesting.)
We left around 5:30 am and a couple people stopped off for street vendor hamburgers. While this happened a couple women in our group disappeared. We looked around for them for about 20-minutes, couldn’t find them, and went back to the hotel. We arrived around 6:00 and they were there, so all ended well. We all knew that it was going to make for a painful final day in Puebla, but it was a great time.
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