Most travellers never give El Alto a second thought. Bolivia’s second city, home to the highest international airport in South America (and fifth-highest in the world) at 4,061 metres, it is a place visitors fly into before being whisked to La Paz, the de facto capital, 15km away and 421 metres lower.

Yet, El Alto is emerging from the shadow of its neighbour, thanks to its fantastic rebel architecture, new cable car routes, emerging culinary credentials and the trailblazing input of its first female mayor, Soledad Chapetón. It’s also proudly championing the Fighting Cholitas, female wrestlers who perform regularly at its sports centre, called El Multifuncional .

To see how this city is developing, I took a new tour with local guide Sandro Diaz Callejas. We started by boarding a Red Line gondola from La Paz’s Central Station, one of the two cities’ seven cable car routes, before changing to the new Blue Line – in the district known as La Ceja, the eyebrow. Below us were the coloured tarpaulins of one of the world’s largest markets, Feria 16 de Julio; along both sides were some of the psychedelic-looking buildings that have become the signature works of indigenous Aymara architect Freddy Mamani Silvestre.

Started in 2005, these structures include commercial premises, apartments, ballrooms and penthouses commissioned by El Alto’s nouveau riche. The most fabulous boast swimming pools, lifts, expensive chandeliers and rooftop football pitches. The fantasy designs spring from motifs and colours found in Aymara culture and weaving.

As we drove past a fairly plain home – though it was embellished with condor wings – Mamani’s PR Marco Quispe, who had come along for the ride, told me: “Each house has its own life and significance, and the commission condition is that Freddy has free rein.”

The first house was commissioned by a salesman who imported mobile phones from Chile, though most clients are Alteños who sell food at the market and stores throughout the city.

“Back then people safeguarded their money and didn’t flaunt it,” said Quispe. “After the ‘gas war’ they decided to show their wealth.”

The 2003 gas war saw bloody protests in El Alto and 60 deaths over the exploitation of the country’s natural gas. It forced the resignation of the country’s president, which paved the way for the election of Evo Morales, Bolivia’s first indigenous president, in 2006.

There are 70 Mamani cholet creations in El Alto (cholet is a portmanteau of the words chalet and cholo — meaning indigenous person; once a derogatory term, it has been rehabilitated as a moniker of pride). Mamani has designed buildings in Peru and Brazil, and a corner of the new museum Evo Morales built in his own honour in his native village of Orinoca. Mamani will also complete his first hotel in El Alto in 2020. In the meantime, travellers can stay in at a B&B in an imitation Mamani buiding, Cholet Havana.

There is growing worldwide interest in indigenous architecture, with a new documentary film, Cholet, screened at the Architecture Film Festival Rotterdam last October; a 2015 exhibition at the School of Architecture in London; and published monographs. Mamani’s reputation is growing apace: the architect has recreated his signature ballroom for an exhibition that opened at the Cartier Foundation for Contemporary Art in Paris last week, entitled Southern Geometries, from Mexico to Patagonia (until 24 February).

Most cholets take three or fours years from drawing board to unveiling and Mamani handles everything (architect, engineer and designer), says Quispe as he drives me past Mamani’s favourite – a biscuit-hued giant whose profile recalls the indigenous vicuña. We then pull up in front of one of the most expensive: the US$1m Equipetrol, where “the facade is plain but it’s crazy inside”.

This new wave of pride and money has drawn other artists to leave their cultural imprint on El Alto. Toy fans will go Instagram-crazy for the Transformers architecture, where facades bear the images of the franchise’s gigantic robots, including the Autobot Optimus Prime building by architect Santos Churata; and new kaleidoscopic Andean motif murals, by painter Roberto Mamani Mamani (no relation), on the Wiphala housing project can be seen from descending planes.

To see the source of much of this wealth, Sandro and I headed inside the 16 de Julio market, jostling with some of the 100,000 locals who visit every Sunday to buy goods from Chile and China, and secondhand clothes from the US. Piles of neon balls of wool, Barbie dolls, plastic flowers, and polleras (traditional pleated skirts) clamoured for our attention. Sandro explained that polleras worn by Aymara women are colour-coded by age and season – red for springtime and young love, for example. He spotted a famous female Aymara TV personality browsing and told me that since a 2010 decree, every state institution and private company must have at least one female Aymara employee, and this has “improved their presence in the public sphere”.

An upshot of this greater visibility is the city’s popular wrestling matches. Cholita wrestling sees pollera-wearing women with their hair in traditional tullmas (plaits) and bowler hats fight it out lucha libre-style as they ping from one side of the ring to the other, wrestle their opponent to the ground, and whip up the local crowd who pelt them with popcorn and mandarins.

Getting on for 20 years ago, Juan Mamani (Mamani is a common Aymara surname), an Alteño wrestler, had the idea of pitting cholitas against each other in a ring. Aymara women had started to wrestle as a form of empowerment in a male-dominated society.Flying Cholitas, as they’re known, broke away from Mamani’s Titans of the Ring group to form an all-female fighting force.

I asked Sandro about other women doing it for themselves and he took me to Rocha’s, El Alto’s highest rooftop bar – at 4,175 metres with views of La Paz’s Andean peak. It has recently been opened by former hotel receptionist Jimena Mamani with a group of other young entrepreneurs. Over mate tea – to help with the altitude – I asked Sandro about El Alto’s 37-year-old first female Aymara mayor, Soledad Chapetón, whose face was plastered on a billboard at the wrestling venue.

“Chapetón represents high-flying El Alto young professionals and she is doing good things. She represents the Unidad Nacional, the opposition to Evo Morales’s MAS party, and is finishing off major works not completed by the government.”

It’s not just in politics, though, that a new chapter has begun for El Alto’s women. We visited Manq’a (it means “food” in Aymara), a culinary project initiated in 2014 by Noma co-founder Claus Meyer. Via his Melting Pot Foundation, Manq’a trains young people who have no access to education, particularly women, to be chefs, bartenders and baristas, and to serve affordable meals in community centres to locals, workers, the city’s 42,000 students – and now to travellers.

At El Adela school and diner next to a park, we sat down to a meal of ajara, wild black quinoa bread, and soup of tunta (freeze-dried potato) sprinkled with amaranto grain and dehydrated strips of llama meat, followed by llama steak topped by a regional vegetable salsa and sensationally cooled by slices of rambutan. A refreshing glass of Bolivian coffee tinged with orange, and mixed with egg white, sugar and jam completed our gourmet adventure. Trainee-turned-employee Katherine Alanoca explained Manq’a’s focus on “healthy, cheap, good products, and encouraging students to open their own restaurants”.

On descending from El Alto, we passed a giant metal statue of Che Guevara, in a public garden where, written in the topiary, it challenges: “El Alto con vuelo propio”.

“El Alto’s got to progress on its own two feet,” Sandro translated. Watch its space, I reckoned, as we spiralled down into La Paz.

• The trip was provided by Journey Latin America, its seven-day holiday to Bolivia costs from £1,137pp, including four nights in La Paz, a city tour of El Alto, including the cable car, a wrestling match and a city tour of La Paz