“Now then mate, I know you’re a London boy and all that, but where we’re going isn’t Leytonstone – they’ll be plenty of dodgy characters and you’ll stick out like a sore thumb.” No good. Louis rolls up his combination of dollars, pesos and pounds into a thick wad, clipping them tight with a shining silver-plated piece resembling a prop from a 50 Cent video. Into the back pocket they go. Nice one mate.
On the upside, Louis is determined when he wants to be and has got us all tickets to see Colombia take on Peru at the Estadio Metropolitano. The national team have their home matches here in a textbook piece of South American strategy. But where in Bolivia they try to starve the opposition of oxygen by playing games at high altitude, the Colombians instead attempt to roast their visitors to death by playing in the infernal coastal crucible that is Barranquilla.
No surprise then that today is a hot one-muchisimo calor- and as dust kicks up around the street corners the battered yellow taxi chugs up outside my apartment. Nixon gets out first, I shout down from my window, and soon with embraces and plenty of cheek kissing we greet the usual posse: friends, colleagues, cousins, friends of cousins and so on. In Colombia where there is fun there are always plenty of participants.
Because it’s a national game there shouldn’t be much trouble on the terraces today and Nixon proves himself as guia yet again, taking us way up to the highest part of the stadium where we get the best view, the most shade and a sparse crowd - it’s perfect. Louis the diehard Spurs fan isn’t content with this kind of thinking though, and rushes off with a couple of lads from Bogota down to the rowdy front. It’s fair enough – he wants a taste of the real Colombia and in that sweaty heaving throng he’ll definitely be feeling it.
Luckily for us, the football is good today. Defence isn’t one of the strong points in South American matches and this particular game is as open as beach soccer. All I can say in the sweltering heat is thank god for ice-cold Aguila, the local beer in this part of the world. Aguila comes with an added bonus - if you don’t like the taste you can check out the bikini-clad girls of all shades and colours they have wrapped around the side of the can. You could look all day...
Soon Peru are flagging, wilting in the tropical heat, and by the end of the match they’re five down to the jubilant Colombians. The worst heat of the day has reduced to a simmer by now, and as we look to the exits Louis comes back up the gangway sullen-faced. They used the usual trick to fleece him of his cash. One of them grabs your ankle, and while you're trying to work out what the hell he's doing, the other guy comes up behind you and it's goodbye currency. Poor old Louis, his first match and all.
