My first experience of a football match in South America and it was a Saturday evening home fixture for Santa Fe, one of Bogota's two big clubs, against Atlético Bucaramanga, who are from the city of Bucaramanga in the north-east of the country. The venue for the fixture was El Estadio Campín, which is a stadium that Santa Fe share with their great city rivals, Millonarios. It has just shy of 40,000 seats and is a bowl like stadium with minimal roofing and quite a distance between the stands and the pitch. I generally don't like this style of stadium but it certainly had character and was centrally located in Bogota. I had secured a ticket online and I walked to the stadium for about half an hour from my accommodation in the Chapinero area of the city. I was a little concerned regarding safety as I had read some warnings about robberies around the stadium, but I was carrying minimal valuables and it turned out to be fine with the streets seeming pretty calm. That might have had something to do with the low attendance of 7,357 which included only a handful of away fans. I was a little surprised by the lack of supporters but this was probably owing to the fact that the weather was a bit miserable, neither team had much to play for, and away-day journeys in Colombia are not straightforward due to its bumpy terrain. I know that on other occasions fixtures at the stadium between the two clubs have been packed to the rafters.

The game itself was a very comfortable win for Santa Fe. It was 0-0 at half time but you could tell that the home side had the more talented attacking players and they were passing the ball around nicely on the wet surface. They made the breakthrough midway through the second half and ran out comfortably 3-0 winners in the end. There was also great entertainment in the stands as despite the low attendance, the hardcore Santa Fe fans behind the goal made a brilliant noise all evening. It was a real taster of what was to come during my experiences of South American football atmospheres, and their version of the famous 'Muchachos' song synonymous with Argentina's recent World Cup triumph was enjoyably ringing in my ears for days!

Overall, it was another really great experience to follow up from my previous and first Latin American football experience in Puebla, Mexico. It was also the start of a realisation of how much Colombian's love their football and how strong the football culture is there. I also managed to make my first purchase in a club shop when I sneaked into the tiny club store before the game and was assisted in buying a red Santa Fe training jersey, which is so nice that despite buying the wrong size I've squeezed into for a few workouts!