You say tomato, we say Tomatina! (26th August)

It's an early start at 6am this morning. Today we are heading to a 'little' festival called La Tomatina. It is the only festival in Spain that does not have a religious or political meaning. (75% of Spanish people are catholic). The origins of the festival are not known and there are various stories... but what happens is that some 30,000 people gather in a little town called Bunol (just under an hour out of Valencia) and throw tomatoes at each other. Our bus departs at 7:15am and we arrive in Bunol an hour later. The timing is perfect because we get to walk into the main street and through the 'square' which is where the action happens. Not that it isn't really a square, rather the street widens from 6 metres to about 18 metres for a short distance before narrowing back again. The atmosphere is amazing as everyone is getting excited for the up coming fight. We pass people trying to tie string on their jandals to hold them on their feet (we have been told numerous times that jandals are not going to stay on and it's a stupid idea to wear them). There's a group of people sitting in the middle of the square playing cards (while they still have space to). Meanwhile most of the buildings which are 3-4 stories high are covered or in the process of being covered in massive tarpaulins to protect them from tomatoes. Some buildings have balconies and the tarps are more like see through mesh as the locals are up on the balconies watching the action below. One section even has locals on the roof with the garden hose ready to squirt/drench unsuspecting tourists as they walk below. We find out which way the trucks are coming through and then head down a back street to bypass the now bulging square to get round to the beginning and avoiding being in the 'thick of it'. Thanks Kim for your advice! It's a great position because we are near the edge of the square and can see the greased pole with the ham on top, plus we get whole tomatoes when the trucks come past and have some space to move around. Greased pole we hear you say? Well before the tomato fight can start the ham needs to be retrieved from the top of a greased pole. Imagine a 10m wooden pole covered in grease (lard) 5cm thick, with a ham on a bone in a bag hung on the top. At 9am the pole goes up and then people proceed to climb up it to try and retrieve the ham. Any time someone makes progress up the pole the crowd goes wild with cheers and chants of "ole ole ole ole". Getting the ham is a matter of pride. The young local guys want to be the town hero, so they are climbing up trying to get the ham. Lots of tourists want to get the ham so they are all having a go too. It is a rough and sometimes violent sport as people stand on each other, pull each other down and basically all fight to be the one person to get the ham. It's a good lesson in how selfish the human race is. If they all worked together to form a human tower then the ham would have been retrieved in minutes. However the scramble goes on for two hours as they work their way to remove the grease and climb higher and higher up the pole. While we wait for the ham some locals open up the man hole to the local water supply a few metres away from us. They've bought buckets or are using beer cups or whatever they can find to collect the water in to throw on people. So before the tomato fight has even begun a water fight is taking place. Eventually a cop comes down and orders the lid to be put back on. After what feels like half an hour (we haven't got watches on because they'd get ruined) he walks away and they resume the fight. It's unfortunate as we had remained discreetly against the wall and somehow managed to stay dry. But then some guy spots us and we end up with a whole bucket of water thrown at us! Oh well at least it's only water and our clothes are only going to be covered in tomatoes soon anyway. We soon learn that regardless of whether the ham is retrieved the tomato trucks roll down the street at 11am. So the cannon fires a shot, the crowd goes wild chanting 'tomata tomata' as we can see the trucks heading towards us. They are tooting their horns loudly to move people out of their way. We squish ourselves against the tarped houses to let the trucks through. They have people on top throwing tomatoes out at us. Occasionally they also stop and tip their load onto the street for a few seconds to allow lots of tomatoes to come rolling out. Some of these off loaders are throwing tomatoes really hard at people. Shona's strategy is to back into the wall, keep her head down to make sure it is protected. Lots of tomatoes have gathered around our ankles and once the truck has past we use the tomatoes we've picked up, squish them (as you must never throw a non squished tomato at someone) and start throwing. Aunty Yvonne's funeral was held overnight in Auckland. Aunty Yvonne didn't like tomatoes so Shona was thinking of her as she threw tomatoes at people. Mainly guys, because she knew they could handle the pelting more. Mike's strategy is to line up targets and aim for them. Usually a guy standing out in the crowd but there are two memorable moments to point out. Remember the locals on the balconies, well Mike aimed for one guy on what we think was the forth floor and hit him on the shoulder. He was so amazed at being hit that he started to look at other balcony's to see who had thrown the tomato! The second was on one of the guys offloading on the truck. Mike saw him lined him up and got him right in the head. Then he threw a second one and got him again! At this point the guy knew it was Mike so he jumped down into the truck to hide while he was in distance to be a target. His knuckles were holding onto the truck and when Mike saw them grip to pull himself back up, he launched a 3rd tomato and got the guy smack in the middle of the forehead. This time he stayed right down until the truck had moved well past! (years of practicing his throwing with his brothers and especially Brendon obviously paid off!) Unfortunately being tall was a downside today - as being a head above the crowd also meant he copped a lot of direct hits as well! After the first truck went past and we had exhausted our tomatoes as they were now a salsa/soup on the road the people that we were next to all agreed that it was fun. This pause gave us time to wipe our hands clean on the inside of our shirts (because there was no point using the outside) and clear our eyes. It was to be the only break in the whole hour of throwing as the next trucks rolled through pretty quickly behind one another. All in all there were five massive trucks with tomatoes. The throwing lasted exactly one hour until another canon went off to signal the end of the fight. Once the canon has gone, you are not allowed to throw any more tomatoes. That didn't matter as there were none left because it was all a soup on the ground. Some people even dived into it to have a little swim (it was halfway up our calves in some places). We made our way back down the side street we had come up, because getting through the square was not an option. The tomatoes were gushing down it (as it had a slope) but we made it safely down without landing on our butts. The next task is to find somewhere to clean up. You are not allowed back on any bus or train with any trace of tomato on you. Good thing is the locals literally stand outside their houses on the street or on their balconies with their hoses and wash water over you. We both stripped off our shirts and had a first rinse. Eventually Shona took out her hair to try and clean it (it had become one big tomato dreadlock) and threw away her socks. Mike's boardies were also going in the bin as were his 10 euro shoes. Well there weren't many bins, so people left their shirts on the side of the streets for cleaners to collect. After passing through 4 different hoses we were finally clean enough to head back to our bus to collect our change of clean clothes. Thanks again Kim for the suggestion of the sarong. Mike looked particularly sexy with it wrapped around him as we changed on the side of the road. We felt heaps cleaner now, but desperately needed the toilet. There was a distinct lack of any toilets anywhere. Luckily we'd past a pub on the way to the coach so we went back for a pit stop and to purchase a lemonade to refresh us. Perfect drinking material in the hot Spanish sun. We waited until 2pm when our coach left to take us back to the hotel. Overall a totally amazing experience. Would we do it again - absolutely! That said, we've done it once so don't feel a huge need to come back again. What happened to the ham? We don't know. At one point during the fight a group of people attempted the human tower. That is three guys got on each others shoulders topped by a forth girl (interestingly dressed in just a once white bikini). She grabbed onto the ham bag but couldn't get it off the hook. The guys fell down and she was swinging off it, but it did not fall down - she did. The ham was still swinging when we left, so we are not sure if anyone did climb up and get it down. Apparently this is quite common. Back at the hotel our shower ran for 1.5 hours as we cleaned ourselves of tomato. It was in our ears, in our eyes, up our noses and in our hair. Kinda interesting to watch the water run a shade of red when we put our hair under. Shona washed her hair 3 times and conditioned it twice just to get it back to blonde! It felt great to be clean! As you can imagine all this exercise and excitement worked up an appetite so we were becoming hangry marvins. Over the road from the hotel was a shopping centre with a great shop called Pan & co. They are kinda like McD's where you choose what you want and a combo comes with fries and drink, but instead of burgers they are subway type sandwiches. Interestingly both our sandwiches had sliced tomato in them which we were still ok to eat! Back at the hotel we were going to attempt an afternoon swim in the pool or at the beach, but first Shona needed a nap. By the time we got going again it was 7pm and so we headed to the beach. We'd heard that some of the beaches in Valencia were the most beautiful in the world. It WAS amazing and we kicked ourselves for not going in the afternoon and napping on the beach. Beautiful white sand and blue ocean with small, but not too small waves breaking on the shore. It didn't stop us swimming as we had a sunset swim in the Mediterranean frolicking in the waves. Mike was paranoid about leaving a bag on the shore, but we watched it the whole time and it was completely safe. Shona would like to come back to Valencia for a week to just lie on the beach! We had taxied to the beach and opted to walk the 40 minute walk back to our hotel. This meant we got to walk past the America's cup base (where there were no boats in the water) and past the stands set up for last week's V8 street race (think Hamilton V8's to know what we mean). Dinner was a kebab from the kebab shop in the mall. We ate it on the side of the road and it was a great end to a fantastic day. Tomatina is definitely in consideration for at least Mike's Top 5! We'd like to note that the quality of the photos are not as good as we would like. We took two disposable cameras with us rather than risking our good camera being covered in tomato. They use old school film so we've had them developed and then taken digital photos of them for you.