Fireworks, Taco Bell and the Black Market

I´ve come to find out that, in South America, soccer maybe the top cultural priority. I guess I have always known this but yesterday I was able to experience it.

A couple of nights ago, the owner of the hostel decided to host the wine tasting. It was a great idea because it allowed us to make friends with people that are staying in the hostel while becoming more knowledgeable about Chilean wines.

At the beginning of the wine tasting the group seemed pretty quiet and intent on listening to the hostel owner, Ian, guide us through these wines. We were sponges...Until about halfway into it and we were starting to feel the pinch. People became more and more gregarious. We wanted to know more about the others. How long had they been travelling? Where were their favorite places? What were they planing on doing while in Santiago?

It was that last question that really struck up a buzz amongst the group. The wine tasting had officially ended and the stragglers were hanging around to finish the wines. The conversation more lively now with a few glasses of wine. What were we to do while in Santiago. A aussie couple had said that they had heard of a soccer match going on today. So we looked it up online to find that, not only was a soccer match occuring the following day, but that it was one of the biggest of the year.

La Copa Toyota Libertedores is South America´s version of the UEFA Champions League (the best teams from their respective countries face off against other teams around the continent for continental supremacy). This particular game featured the home town favorite Colo-Colo against the past champions, River Plate (Rio Plata). There was a considerable buzz amongst the city, and with our wine induced enthusiasm we all decided that we were going.

Not surprisingly, the wine tasting night turned into a pretty late night. When the day of the game came around, we had found that our numbers had dwindled to roughly half of us (7). For those remaining, we found ourselves extremely excited. Since we knew that the game was going to be a close call on tickets we decided to to leave 5 hours early to get tickets.

¨No hay entradas,¨ is what we were told. It was sold out. We were all extremely dishearted because our hostel manager, Mario, had said if you don´t get there in time for real tickets then don´t go, scalper often sell fakes. It should have been obvious to us then, but our excitement for the game wasn´t going to be dampened by not getting tickets at the box office. We were getting into the game.

It should be noted that when you are walking to the box office, there are a considerable amount of people selling all kinds of Colo-Colo gifts, attire and tickets. There are food vendors on mobile carts, trash littered about. It´s an impromptu black market of soccer goods.

I was the only one to speak spanish, so naturally I was asked to bargain a deal for us. I asked one of the guys about tickets and he quickly responded by bringing his friend over. He was a guy about my age, well dressed and probably made a good deal of money on scalping these tickets. His initial offer of 25,000 pesos was flatly rejected by our group. They told me to try to get the price down so I made a slightly unwise move of not making a low enough offer. I said 20,000 pesos, which would have delighted every one (since the face value is 17,000 pesos) but that´s not how it works. I did however make up for it by asking him to prove that the tickets were valid. So we walked over to the gate and asked one of the guards if they were good tickets. He said they were, and I told the scalper we´d do it for 20, and he then lowered to 22 and i said 20 again and he went to 21. The group seemed pleased enough with this so we purchased the tickets and said farewell to the friendly scalper.

We had about three and a half hours left still before game time, so we decided to get something to eat. There was a department store across the street so we went over to find that it was part of a mall and had a food court, just like any other mall in America. There was some debate over where to go, until I saw it. Like a lighthouse in the night, there stood Taco Bell. The menu was different so I had to adapt and get a french fry/nacho thing and a burrito. Not surprisingly it hit the spot.

After eating we went to the grocery store to get some brews before heading over to the game. No dice, the grocery store will not sell beer on game days within three hours of game time. This is about when it started to hit me, soccer is HUGE here. With nothing to do and the gates to the game open we decided to go and sit down in the stadium.

This stadium was unlike any other i have ever seen in my entire life. It´s small, maybe seats only 40,000 people, but it had huge fences in between sections with razor wire on top of it. The fence surrounding the pitch was 30 feet high behind the goals and 10 on the sides. How crazy are these fans that they need this?

As the stadium quickly filled up (an hour before the game!) the noise got louder and louder until the whole stadium broke out in song, which did not stop until the end of the game. They have flags, banners, huge balloons, flares and firecrackers. It was insane.

When it came time for the game to start, the players ran out of this retractable tube (so as not to be hit by fans throwing things). The whole stadium erupted, people IN THE STANDS were lighting firecrackers. Let me say that again, people in the stands were lighting fire crackers. The noise of the fireworks wasn´t that bad because the fan noise was so loud that the firecrackers were only slightly louder.

Play began and we were to quickly find out that River Plate was a much better team that the hometown. They outplayed them the whole time and when they broke the stalemate late in the first half their small but heroic crowd went nuts. I say heroic because showing up to this stadium in the opposing teams colors was slightly worse than treason against the government. It was so bad that the opposing fans could only sit in on section, razorwired off and barricaded by riot police. They weren´t even allowed to leave the game until everyone had left and they´d be escorted out by the police.

The second half was more domination by River plate, but at least Colo Colo decided to make things a little interesting. The did indeed score a goal. If the fans went crazy upon entrance to the game, then they were at this point completely psychotic and torn with joy. More fireworks, more yelling, throwing things on the field (interesting note, they would throw toilet paper rolls onto the field and the players would just play through it). The game ended in a 2-1 defeat, that really wasn´t that close.

Everyone had calmed down at this point as we were heading home. We thought we had gotten out of the insanity, but we were coming to find out that getting home is the hardest part. The metro, what we took to get there, closes at 10:30 every night, about an hour before the game ends. So every one tries to take the bus. There are no rules on people per seat/seatbelt like in the US, so people are completely stacked into these buses to the point that they are hanging out of the doors while the bus is bombing down the street, tilting slightly to the right.

We were smart and realized that it looked to be a bad idea to take the bus. Instead we´d just share a couple of taxis. Every single taxi was full. So we started walking towards town, which would have been really creepy if it wasn´t for the fact that nearly half of the stadium was doing the same. We walked for about 40 minutes when we saw that the crowds were thinning out and we got to the center divider to hail a cab. Only one came, we had seven people, we all went. To say the least it was a cramped ride. But it was funny and we made it back safely.

This was an even that I won´t soon forget. It brought the whole idea of fanatacism to a new level. I will never see the great American rivalries (Red Sox-Yanks, Ohio State-Michigan, Duke-UNC, Lakers-Celtics, Dodgers-Giants, UCLA-USC) in the way I used to see them. We don´t have razor wire separating fans at our events.