ဘုိလီဗီးယားႏိုင္ငံ၊ လာပက္ဇ္ ျမိဳ ့မွာ တည္ရွိတဲ့ ႏိုင္ငံအသင္းအိမ္ကြင္း Estadio Hernando Siles မွာ ကစားခဲ့တဲ့ပြဲစဥ္တုိင္းနီးပါးကို ဘိုလီးဗီးယားအသင္းက အႏိုင္ရရွိခဲ့ပါတယ္။ အျမင့္ေပ ၁၁ ၉၃၂ ေပ မွာ တည္ရွိတဲ့ ေဘာလုံးကြင္းဟာ ေအာက္စီဂ်င္ဓာတ္နည္းပါးမွဳေၾကာင့္ လာေရာက္ကစားရတဲ့ အသင္းတုိင္းက ကစားသမားေတြဟာ ေအာက္စီဂ်င္မ၀၊အသက္ရွဴမ၀ျဖစ္ျပီး ကြင္းထဲမူးေမ့လဲ၊ မကစားႏိုင္တဲ့ အေျခအေနကို အျမဲ ၾကဳံေတြ ့ေနရပါတယ္။
ကမၻာ့အဆင့္သတ္မွတ္ခ်က္မွာ ၈၀ ေက်ာ္ေနတဲ့ ႏိုင္ငံေဘာလုံးအသင္းဟာ ၁၉၉၄ ကမၻာ့ဖလားေျခစစ္ပြဲမွာ ကမၻာ့အဆင့္တစ္ ဘရာဇီးအသင္းကို ဒီကြင္းမွာ ၂ -၀ နဲ ့အႏိုင္ယူခဲ့ျပီး ဘရာဇီးအသင္းရဲ့ ႏွစ္ ၄၀အတြင္း ေျခစစ္ပြဲအဆင့္မွာ ပထမဆုံးရွဳံးနိမ့္မွဳစံခ်ိန္ကို ရရွိေစခဲ့ပါတယ္။ ဒါတင္မကေသးဘူး ဧျပီ ၂၀၀၉ ခုႏွစ္မွာ ကမၻာ့အဆင့္သုံး အာဂ်င္တီးနားအသင္းကို ဒီကြင္းမွာပဲ ၆ -၁ ဂိုးနဲ ့ဂိုးျပတ္အႏိုင္ယူခဲ့ကာ အာဂ်င္တီးနားအသင္း ရဲ့ ႏွစ္ ေျခာက္ဆယ္ သက္တမ္းအတြင္း အဆုိးရြားဆုံးရွဳံးနိမ့္မွဳစံခ်ိန္ကို ရရွိေစခဲ့ျပန္ပါတယ္။
ဒီ လာပက္ဇ္ျမိဳ ့ကြင္းဟာ ပင္လယ္ေရမ်က္ႏွာျပင္အျမင့္ တစ္ေသာင္းေက်ာ္မွာ တည္ရွိတဲ့အတြက္ လာေရာက္ ယွဥ္ျပိဳင္ရတဲ့အသင္းေတြဟာ ဒီေလဖိအားနဲ ့က်င့္သားမရၾကဘဲ အျမဲလုိလုိ ကြင္းထဲ မူးေမ့လဲတတ္ၾကပါတယ္။ ေအာက္စီဂ်င္ဓာတ္ေကာင္းေကာင္းမရတဲ့အတြက္ ေဘာလုံးပြဲကို အားစိုက္မကစားႏိုင္ဘဲ ဒီပတ္၀န္းက်င္နဲ ့ က်င့္သားရေနတဲ့ ဘုိလီဗီးယားသားေတြ အၾကိဳက္ျဖစ္ခဲ့ပါတယ္။
အခုေတာ့ ဘုိလီဗီးယားအသင္းကို ႏိုင္ငံပြဲစဥ္ေတြ ဒီကြင္းမွာ လက္ခံကစားဖုိ ့ပိတ္ပင္လုိက္ရျပီး အျမင့္ေပ ၈၂၀၀ ေက်ာ္တဲ့ ကြင္းေတြမွာ လက္ခံမကစားရဘူးဆုိတဲ့ စည္းမ်ဥ္းကိုပါ ထုတ္ျပန္ခဲ့ရပါတယ္။
Ref: wikipedia
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Estadio Hernando Siles, La Paz – The Highest National Football Stadium In The World

My trip to La Paz would have been incomplete was it not for a visit to what is a cauldron of world football – Estadio Hernando Siles in La Paz. This is Bolivia’s national football stadium, and happen to be the highest national football stadium in the World.

So much so that FIFA once tried to ban Bolivia from playing there! How ridiculous, as this is the point of home advantage.

So I was staying at Loki Hostel in downtown La Paz. I had heard many bad reports about La Paz before going there. One from my good friend Richard “richboy” Ingram who marked La Paz off as “shite”, and “somewhere to avoid” another from the Lonely Planet book which claimed “La Paz is full of scams and can be dodgy.”

Of course the glory of travelling is that people are different,and while Richard “richboy” Ingram didn’t find his charm with La Paz, I certainly did. Loki Hostel itself was amazingly well situated for visiting the national football stadium.

I could have easily jumped in a collectivo (these are mayhem and there are loads of them in La Paz) and got a ride there for a few dollars.

But on a brisk early morning, I felt like a stroll through the mayhemic rush hour and up hills, getting out of breath on a special journey for me to see this football treasure chest.

I left the hostel alone on the walk to the stadium. I passed many people going to work – no tourists were around. The walk took me up Illimani Calle until it came to a busy roundabout junction at Plaza Del Estadio (Stadium Square).

And there in it’s grey sprawling city like grandeur was the beast itself – the very venue where in 2009, Bolivia smash dunked Maradona’s Argentina 6-1. Bolivia’s home record at this very stadium is fucking immense. They rarely lose here.

And it’s no surprise. I struggled for breath myself, even on a dreary mild morning.

It was high up, but La Paz even veered higher again to my left, heading into hills of almost lego like blocks, similar to the ranchos in Caracas, of Venezuela fame. This stadium eclipsed everything in sight.

The stadium is officially called Estadio Hernando Siles, named after the 31st President of Bolivia, who was in charge when Bolivia played in the 1930 World Cup finals in Uruguay.

I crossed the very busy rush hour roundabout to arrive at the football stadium, which is basically almost just a massive roundabout itself, with a road circling it. The main entrance was totally shut and at 8.30 am ish there wasn’t going to be much chance of getting inside, which was my dream.

Some graffiti celebrating the massive win inflicted on Argentina the year before I visited La Paz. The goals are below on the video link – a 6-1 thrashing!

Once I realised the stadium looked closed and the chance to go in had probably gone, I decided just to do a loop of the whole stadium on the off chance I could somehow get inside. It was almost 9 am, as I walked slow that day due to the high altitude and the need to keep breathing at the normal pace.

But once I rounded the corner, I saw this green door with a lock on it, which looked to be passable. The lock stretched across the two doors, but the inner door was unlocked, A door within a door. So in I went…

It was actually one of those scary moments once inside, but the eagerness and passion I had to actually see this beast of a stadium in the flesh over-rode everything else. I closed the first door behind me – the street behind was quiet and nobody had seen me sneak in. Yes I was trespassing, but I’m a football fan and if I only have a few days in La Paz I want to stand on the pitch and look around the stadium.

Next challenge was through another gate inside, a yellow one – this one also by luck was closed over but not locked so I took my chance and in I went.

And there it was in front of me – I feasted my eyes on this marvel. A well enclosed stadium and now I was standing where Bolivia had bate Argentina 6-1.

There were a few morning joggers there – I gathered they came from the gym which was attached to the main stand in the stadium. Nobody approached me to ask what I was doing and I guess if they had of done I would have just told them how much I love football and how much I wanted to see Bolivia’s famous national stadium.

It felt unreal to be in there and because we were so high up, there was NO NOISE coming from outside. It was like another world. Busy beeping collectivos fly past outside in the mayhem. Inside a pin could drop and you hear it.