Valencia, Spain 8-27-09

Monday morning I rushed to the train station and hopped onto my 5 hour train to Madrid and then my 4 hour train to Valencia. The entire ride over I had no idea where I would be staying.. well, that's a stretch.. but, since every hostel was fully booked (because of la tomatina), I could either stay with an Australian girl someone put me in contact with who booked a hotel for two and would cost me about $100 US for 2 nights or sleep on a park bench. Really, I was holding out for my friends who I met in Seville. They had an apartment in the center of Valencia for 6 and I was praying they would have room for me to squeeze in. About one hour before I arrived in Valencia I received a facebook message from Sean (one my friends from Lagos), letting me know that everything would be fine and there would be plenty of room for me (YES!!). I arrived in Valencia around 6pm and Sean met me at the train station and walked with me back to the apartment.

We stayed in a gorgeous place! It was a very modern apartment, fully furnished, washing machine, dishwasher, beds, art work, flat screen TV.. the works. In our group of 7 we had my 2 guy friends from Seville, Sean and Cameron, 2 girls from Australia, Jess and Alex, and 2 guys that they met in Lagos (one of which I met when I was there too) Matt and Tom. Everyone had just arrived in Valencia from Lagos, Portugal and we had some laughs talking about the craziness of Lagos. We all had the Lagos cough too.

This group was amazing, everyone was very outgoing, laid back, and friendly. We all cooked dinner together on the first night and made a huge spaghetti dish and a really nice salad. We ate and watched some Family guy on Tom's laptop and then eventually went to sleep.

On Tuesday we walked around the city a little bit and got to see the outside of the bull ring and did a little shopping. The girls got matching outfits for La Tomatina (white outfits and goggles!) and the guys picked out white things they would need too. Tom decided he was going to wear a white dress for fun and picked out one for about 10 euros. After picking up the essentials we had a little coffee break at a Starbucks (first one I've seen over here) and picked up some groceries for dinner. Our plan was to get to sleep around 12am or so, wake up at 6am, make it to the train station by 7am, and get to Buñol (where the tomato fight would be) by 8am. Even though the fight doesn't start until 11, we heard that if we didn't get into town early enough, we might not be able to push through the crowds enough to even see the tomatoes. I was still feeling a little bit sick and I laid down early on the living room futon around 11pm thinking I would get in lots of rest before my wake up call at 6am.

At 2am I woke up to screaming, "WE'RE GOING! WE'RE GOING TONIGHT! WE'RE GOING RIGHT NOW!". The guys were all in a frenzie and I was trying to figure out what was going on. During the last hour I was sleeping, Matt had called a friend of his to ask her about La Tomatina since she went the year before. She was telling Matt that the best part of the whole event is to get there the night before for the parties in the street and that if we didn't get there the night before, we would miss out on everything and not even make it. She said the best day of her whole vacation was the night before La Tomatina. Since the 2 Aussie girls were still out partying we didn't want to leave yet and instead called someone else who had been to La Tomatina before. He said the same exact thing, we HAD to go to Buñol the night before, and we would regret it if we didn't. Okay, our minds were made up, we were going to Buñol! We started getting ready and were able to get a hold of the girls too. They came home and we jumped into taxis (after negotiating a price with the drivers first) and were on our way to Buñol at 2:30am!

Our two taxi drivers were crazy and were driving about 95 MPH on the freeway to get us there quickly. I was in charge of speaking to the drivers, since I knew the most Spanish, and somehow we made it there in about 30 minutes for only about 15 euros per person. When we arrived we kept asking the people in the street when the parties were and we were directed to a street which looked deserted. We got out of the taxis and started walking. A few people were skeptical, but almost every person I walked past I asked "Pardona, donde esta el discoteca para la tomatina?" they all pointed down the street and said "a final de calle". I translated to my group and told them not to worry, the parties are at the end of the street. We walked for about 20 blocks and finally saw signs of the tomato festival, the buildings and restaurants were boarded up and covered in plastic tarps! We could see people in the distance and kept walking. About 10 more blocks up and the parties started. At 3 am, music was blasting from every direction. On both sides of the streets were outside clubs with DJ's and lights and bars. The further you walked, the more outside clubs and DJ's you saw. It was a pretty great site to see. Food vendors were there, carnival rides, beer.. what more could we ask for.

We found a great club and danced and partied until 8am. We were starving and started walking back towards the tarped buildings and stopped at a little outside mart for french fries. We were in a great mood, taking pictures and laughing, when all of a sudden a beer can flew towards us and hit Cameron in the face. We looked around and everyone was playing dumb. About a minute later another one came flying our way and Cameron saw who threw it. He walked towards the group of Spanish guys and I had a really bad feeling about what was about to happen. A fight broke out and Sean was keeping Cameron and the other guys separated. Matt was over there and Tom jumped in with his white dress on. Our 4 guys were outnumbered to their 10 and I think they realized that and finally starting walking towards us girls who had been yelling the entire time for the guys to just leave and follow us down the street. As we walked away they threw 3 more full beer cans at us and kept laughing and following us down the street. Not FUN. Eventually they stopped and we were all in a pretty bad mood.

The street where the tomato fight was supposed to be was pretty deserted and all we had left to do was wait 2 hours for the festivities to begin. I was able to fall asleep for a little while but still felt a bit tired. When I woke up from my last 10 minute nap the street had really picked up and was pretty crowded. As the time passed more and more people filed in until the street was so jammed with people it was difficult to move. At 10am the greased pole, with a ham at the top, was lifted up to signal the start of the festival. It's a tradition at La Tomatina for a soapy, slicked up, 30 ft pole to be placed at the festival. A ham is tied to the top of it and our goal as a crowd is to get the ham down before the start of the tomato fight. I stared in amazement as guys jumped on each other and stepped on each others shoulders, heads, and faces to get up above them on the pole. Sometimes there was teamwork and the top climber would reach their hand out to signal for a t-shirt to be thrown there way and then they would wipe the thick soap lard off the pole. Cameron, Sean, and I made our way to it and as I was on Cameron's shoulders, Sean had an idea. He would go on top of Cameron's shoulders, and then I would go on top of Sean's shoulders, and then this other girl would go on top of mine and we would walk to the pole and get the ham down. Well, luckily I wasn't drunk enough to think that would be a good idea, but the guys and I still worked our way towards the pole to have at it.

I was picked up in the air and crowd surfed to the pole. I was thrown all over the place and was loving it, till my disposable waterproof camera tore off my wrist and was lost in the crowd. I had a moment where I could have jumped down, but I figured I had made it this far, might as well go for it. I was getting thrown closer and closer to the pole when my shoes started coming off. This time I knew I had to get down. The streets would be filled with tomatoes and heaps of junk, I didn't want to risk stepping on glass and so I made my way back to solid ground. I found Cam and he pointed to Sean who was acting as a base at the bottom of the pole climbers. As we stood there we were pushed and moved around like a school of tiny fish in the water. We would sway forward and then back, fall all the way left and then right. It was like being at a rock concert, but with thousands more people and worse movement. Most of it was from the crowds all pushing forward to add momentum for the climbers and hold them up, but then when they would fall the whole crowd would fall back too. After an hour a few great attempts were made at the pole, but still no ham. The last person to climb was a girl who was using a belt and would hold herself up with her legs and tighten the belt around the pole above her. She would slide the belt up and tighten it and then pull herself higher. She was great and made it up right to the ham but wasn't able to get it down. The guns fired and it was time for the tomato fight!

Our group was positioned on the side of the narrow street. On the opposite side of the street was a huge metal cage with 10 people inside holding firefighter hoses. They started spraying us all down with freezing water and we had no where to go since we were so crammed in it was hard to even move our arms forward. A battle broke out between our side of the street and the other and all the guys were soaking their t-shirts in water, tying them in knots and throwing them like weapons to the enemy on the other side of the street. The shirts felt like baseballs and we girls were getting pretty scared. We ducked down and were pressed against the wall of the street as the guys stood over us touching the wall and blocking the shirts. The freezing water and wet shirt fight continued until horn blasts from a truck were heard. These massive mac trucks with an open top were squeezing through the streets throwing and dumping out insane amounts of tomatoes. The tomatoes where thrown, shirts were thrown, cold water hit us every 10 seconds... it was hell. I was basically curled up against the wall with my goggles on, covering my head with one arm and my face with the other. And STILL I was getting hit with full tomatoes and t-shirts. I was with a few girls and we just kept collecting the shirts by our feet so there would be less out there. After 30 minutes I was freezing and pretty unhappy and needed to get away from the freezing water. I told the girls where I'd meet them after the fight and I started walking to get away from the reach of the water. I was so happy to squeeze into a spot between people where the sun was hitting us and there was no water. Even though in the sun the dirty tomato juices, mixed with wet t-shirt B.O., and urine, smelled like vomit, I was happy to be in a warm place. I started scooping up tomatoes and throwing them around and had about 40 seconds of bliss before I was hit in the face with a tomato.

After about 8 Mac trucks full of tomatoes came by, the final guns were fired to signal the completion of the fight. The crowds spilled down the sides of the steep streets like running water (which we were all calf deep in) and made our way to the river. We all got a nice rinse and the water and bathing reminded me of what India must look like.. brown water, hundreds of people bathing themselves and drinking from the same water. Pretty gross. After I got most of the tomato pieces out of ears and my hair we had to walk up a hill to get to the train station which would take up back to Valencia. After one hour waiting in a line in the sun, 45 minutes on a train smelling like rotten wet tomatoes, 20 minutes on a metro, and 30 minutes walking down the streets of Valencia barefoot, we made it home! I jumped in the shower as quick as I could, spent what seemed like days in the there, and then made a bee-line straight for my bed. I slept from 2pm till 10pm, we all sort of woke up and ate random things.. and a few hours later went back to sleep from 2am till 10am.

I woke up feeling sort of refreshed (after 16 hours of sleep), had some breakfast, packed up my backpack, and headed to the train station. Next stop, Barcelona!