On Thursday, us Peace Corps volunteers had the good fortune of finally getting a holiday off. Until then, we were required to go to training on both U.S. and Colombian holidays, while the staff got both of those holidays off. I think that actually is one of the lessons we are scheduled to learn about in our training called "Sometimes the world isn't fair kid, now stop crying." Regardless, I wanted to take advantage of this day off. It just so happened to be that the local futbol team, The Barranquilla Juniors, was going to be playing a playoff game here in Barranquilla on that day, so my host dad, Alberto, was able to score some tickets and I went with him and my Peace Corps pal Emily. Before leaving the house, Alberto told me that they didn't allow people to wear belts into the stadium. At first I thought "How peculiar," then I realized that this is Colombia and they take their futbol seriously and that a belt is a damn good weapon, just ask any member of the Jackson 5.
We got to the stadium about 45 minutes before kickoff, which was good because the stadium was going to be pretty crowded since it was a playoff game. They had various music playing on the PA system, which is customary in any sporting event. However, as they were playing some choice salsa cuts, the camera feed to the jumbotron was fixated on a beautiful, curvy woman dancing next to her seat. This practice too is familiar to many sporting venues, but they continued to keep the camera on her for over 15 minutes. Now, this would make sense if it was some sort of dance team or cheerleaders, but this was just some paying customer. Even though this dame was pretty damn attractive, that's a long time to point the camera at someone who doesn't work for the team. The fans didn't seem to mind, not surprisingly. They continued to cheer and whistle for her for almost the entire duration of her "routine."
Mike, another PC pal of mine, and his two brothers met up with us shortly before kickoff. There were some interesting characters at the stadium. I saw a man drinking beer out of a two liter bottle, aka the gentleman's chalice, and another man selling beer out of a dirty bucket. Man did I want some bucket beer. One thing that I will always remember about these Latin American futbol games is how loud they are. It seems everyone had an air horn, which is surprising that they are allowed in but not belts. I was lucky enough to sit right in front of a horn enthusiast. Unfortunately, I had a bit of a late night the prior night, so I had a bit of a headache. Let me tell you, in that situation, nothing feels better than sitting in direct sunlight with a guy making sweet music with his air horn right behind you. At least there were very few vuvuzelas. During half-time, there were only two fights which warranted hoards of police to break up by means of wildly swinging their clubs at anyone they see. Pretty tame. Between the fights, there was more music playing and that meant the camera was searching the crowd for attractive women. Every time it found a relatively attractive woman, all the guys in the stadium started whistling. Occasionally, the camera would find a cute child or someone that didn't happen to be a beautiful woman and the crowd would go completely silent.
This game was the second game in a two game series. The first game was held in the home stadium of the Boca Chicos, the team playing the Juniors. The game had to be called early because the head referee was struck in the face by a firework that someone in the crowd had launched and he began to bleed profusely. You know, just a day in the life. Luckily, Juniors ended up tying the game in fairly dramatic fashion, and for reasons that were explained to me but I failed to comprehend, they won the series. That was good news because if they had lost, we would have had to navigate our way through thousands of angry, rioting fans. Overall, a pretty good time.
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