Pelotas and bets

Spain Road Trip, day 6, Bilbao.

After a couple of days with way too much walking, today we took it easy, basically checking Casco Viejo, Bilbao's old town

The highlight was watching 3 matches of Pala, one of the variations of basque pelota.

It was a very fun experience, with lots of exciting moments. The game mechanics and rules reminded me of squash but faster and "harsher" (suffice to say the players used helmets).

Something that we weren't aware were the bets during gameplay, which made the event much more interesting. There were 3 bookies that were continuously shouting (from what we could understand) something related to the current win-lose odds.

People could shout bets at a bookie, so he would fill a small ticket, stick it inside an opened tennis-ball, threw it to the person that had placed the bet, that would keep the ticket and then threw the ball back to the bookie.

The audience, around 80 people, was mostly old men, with lots of drinking, smoking (cigarettes and cigars) and taunting the players. All in all, a great way to spend 3 hours resting your feet.

The photo shows a man with the typical basque beret and another with a bet ticket on his hand.