Some of the University of Chile students we met at an asado, invited us to soccer event called La Noche Alba for a local team: Colo Colo. This kick-off event is held before the start of the official soccer season and lasts a good 6 hours.
I arrived around 7 pm, but it took us a while to find our Chilean friends among the crowds. Pedrero, a metro station, is about 2 blocks away from the Colo Colo stadium, and during the walk over we were surrounded by tons of excited fans. The streets were also lined with food vendors (mostly sausages, hamburgers, and empanadas).
La Noche Alba started off with a series of friendly soccer games between retired Colo Colo players. Later, some musical groups performed, including one popular Cumbia band from Argentina. This was followed by the official presentation of the 2011 Colo Colo Fútbol team and and a beautiful display of fuegos artificiales (fireworks). The evening finally wrapped up with a close game between Colo Colo and Nacional, a team from Uruguay.
The festivities ended around 1 am. Since the metro closes at 11 pm and the bus system is particularly slow, a friend and I split a cab home and arrived close to 2 am- leaving just enough time to get a good night's sleep before classes the next day. Not too bad for a Tuesday night!
If you want to read more about Colo Colo or Fútbol in South America check out: http://www.colocolo.cl/
The Colo Colo Logo
El Estadio
The Fans
The energy of the fans at the game was really quite admirable: they didn't ever seem to stop cheering, chanting and jumping during the event. This was particularly true for one section of the stadium that is especially cheap. The tickets there cost about 1,000 pesos ($2). In contrast, our Chilean friends had us buy better tickets (12,000 pesos) because the cheaper sections can get quite rowdy and dangerous. So, even though we weren't in the middle of the crowd, we were able to share the excitement.
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