We finally made it to our first South American football game! We found out that Cienciano, Cusco’s local team would be playing the day after we got back from the amazing Machu Picchu trek, on Sunday 2nd August. Bare in mind, ever since we landed in South America I had been badgering anyone, who could understand me, about where we could watch a game. Eventually we got the timing right!
Later the same day we bumped into Timmy, a Belgium chap we met in Lima, and he was keen to go too. So we were all set for Cienciano V Jan Aurich and we met up the next the morning and got a taxi to the ground which wasn’t too far out of Cusco. We bought our tickets which were a bargain at 10 Soles (nearly 2GBP!) for seats along the side. Didn’t really want to sit at one of the ends behind the goal where all the hardcore fans are - First game and all we weren’t sure what to expect!
Well it turned out to be a lovely ground, open topped with a beautiful panoramic surround view of the mountains behind. It’s capacity was around 30000 but it wasn’t full and one of the ends was empty. Think this is where the away fans would have been but they hadn’t made the trek. Being in Cusco, this stadium was at an altitude of 3400m and not a lot of teams enjoy playing here because of that.
The home fans (behind the goal) didn’t disappoint and created a good atmosphere with their singing, drumming and dancing. Quite a strange dance where they would jump up and turn a quarter turn to their right, then in the next step, jump up again and twist a half turn back to the left, not sure if this would take down the lane! They kept this up for most of the first half.
Cienciano ended up winning 5-1 and Jan Aurich had a player sent off. Not a bad introduction to South American footy! After it was back to the ‘highest’ Irish pub for a couple of cold ones!
