The Big Game (Part 1)

It was by far the biggest thing happening in Medellin yesterday.

We happened to see a poster in the morning advertising a soccer game that would happen at 7:15 p.m. that evening. It turns out the soccer stadium was only about a 15 minute walk from our hostal. We thought we would give it a go.

About 6 p.m. we set out for the stadium. All we had to do was follow the hordes of people in their green and white jerseys, the jersey of the local team called the "Atletico Nacional."

We found out later that this game was a playoff for the Copa Liberatadores which is like the soccer championship of South America. A really big deal. There were only eight teams left in contention. If the Nacionals won they would go to the semi-finals. We read later that about 33,000 people attended.

When we got there we discovered the game was sold out, so we had to get tickets from a scalper. We got 44,000 peso seats for 50,000 (about $28). Not bad. They were assigned seats, but we discovered after a lot of confusion that no one goes to their assigned seats. You just go to the section where your seats are and claim a seat. This turned out to be a good thing because the seats we bought were not together.