Awake at 5.30am on holiday? You do when you're hardcore. We stuffed down some breaky that we had bought at the supermarket the night before and headed out in our fighting gear, not knowing what to expect at all. Fair to say at this point Lou was quite nervous and unsure about the whole thing but she's a trooper.
We felt instantly relieved when we saw large crowds of young folk like us dressed in their whites heading to the trains station, so we just followed them. Even at 6am the trains were packed, a lot of people probably hadn't been to bed the night before as there was a fair amount of alcohol going round! The train took about 40 minutes and then again we just followed the crowds, there was no organisation or signs or anything, just a whole lot of stalls selling sangria and San Miguel! We joined in, grabbed ourselves an early morning beer and ham baguette and chowed down.
The origins of La Tomatina are sketchy to say the least. In 1945, during another parade, young men who wanted to participate in the event staged a brawl. Since there was a vegetable stand nearby, they picked up tomatoes and used them as weapons. The following year the young people repeated the fight, only this time they brought their own tomatoes from home. They were again dispersed by the police. After repeating this in subsequent years, the party was, albeit unofficially, established.
We noticed our fellow tomato fighters were pretty much 70/30 split between foreigners and Spanish people. And out of those foreigners about 60% were Aussies, man they make some noise. As we had in Paris, they had this strange obsession with the "Aussie Aussie Aussie" chant. They needed to do it approx. every 10 minutes which got super annoying.
Anyway, we found our spot, little did we know that we were right on the main street where the trucks come past, so we just chilled out there for what seemed like eternity but it was actually about 3 hours. Our main source of entertainment was the "palo jabón", similar to the greasy pole. The goal is to climb a greased pole with a ham on top. As this happens, the crowd work into a frenzy of singing and dancing while being showered in water from hoses. Once someone is able to drop the ham off the pole, the start signal for the tomato fight is given.This sounds pretty straight forward but oh my god this took forever. Instead of working as a team and climbing on each other shoulders to reach the top, the stupid egotistical drunk men just shoved people out of the way and climbed over each other to get to the top. Eventually this young Spanish guy got the ham, (and it was a full leg of ham which would have been quite heavy) and the crowd went mental. He crowd surfed down the whole street (Hamish touched his foot) to great applause.
Then the chaos began, several trucks come down the road and throw tomatoes in abundance. The water hoses are also going full blast and that water is artic! Everyone is soaking wet by this stage and Lou got the shakes pretty early on and couldn't warm up which wasn't too fun. The tomatoes come from Extremadura, where they are less expensive and are grown specifically for the holidays, being of inferior taste, and believe me they tasted foul. And they hurt! A couple of big tomatoes in the back of the head and you know about it.
After exactly one hour, the fight ends with the firing of the second shot, announcing the end. To be completely honest Lou was quite glad it was the end. She was freezing, smelly and really needed to pee. Due to the sheer volume of people, it took us forever to get back to the station where we could get some food and go to the loo. A lot of people seemed to be keen to hang around and have a few more drinks but we were pretty keen to get out on one of the early trains.
As we were in Spain, there are always funny rules. Like at the train station, it really didn't matter how filthy you were, as long as you had a shirt on. And some of the stupid boys in the crowds think it's a good idea to rip their shirts off and throw them round. And so the enterprising locals in Bunol set up T shirt stalls right next door….
We got back to Valencia about 4pm and had long hot showers and a wee nap due to the day's excitement.
We decided to treat ourselves for our last night on holiday and went in search of an authentic Valencian meal. We set off around 7pm, pretty hungry at this stage and to our disappointment hardly any of the good restaurants were open (they didn't open till 8pm).
So we ended up settling for a cheap place that did a set menu that we could understand. We knew it would be poor quality but bread, a starter, main, pudding and a glass of wine all for 10 euros ain't bad. Lou had the paella and felt pretty good about how much better the one that she makes is. The rest of the meal was forgettable except for the Catalonian cream that Lou had for desert. It's basically the Spanish version of crème brulee, very very yummy.
We strolled back to our hotel and had a much deserved early night.
Highlight: Being part of a world renowned festival!
Lowlight: Lou froze for a good 2 hours. Not fun. Also the Aussies making noise….shhhh
Interesting Fact #1: The village cobblestone in the Bunol streets are pristine due to the acidity of the tomato disinfecting and thoroughly cleaning the surfaces.
Interesting Fact #2: 30,000 cram into the little village square and surrounding roads
Interesting Fact #3: 125,000 kilos of tomatoes are thrown in an hour.
We felt instantly relieved when we saw large crowds of young folk like us dressed in their whites heading to the trains station, so we just followed them. Even at 6am the trains were packed, a lot of people probably hadn't been to bed the night before as there was a fair amount of alcohol going round! The train took about 40 minutes and then again we just followed the crowds, there was no organisation or signs or anything, just a whole lot of stalls selling sangria and San Miguel! We joined in, grabbed ourselves an early morning beer and ham baguette and chowed down.
The origins of La Tomatina are sketchy to say the least. In 1945, during another parade, young men who wanted to participate in the event staged a brawl. Since there was a vegetable stand nearby, they picked up tomatoes and used them as weapons. The following year the young people repeated the fight, only this time they brought their own tomatoes from home. They were again dispersed by the police. After repeating this in subsequent years, the party was, albeit unofficially, established.
We noticed our fellow tomato fighters were pretty much 70/30 split between foreigners and Spanish people. And out of those foreigners about 60% were Aussies, man they make some noise. As we had in Paris, they had this strange obsession with the "Aussie Aussie Aussie" chant. They needed to do it approx. every 10 minutes which got super annoying.
Anyway, we found our spot, little did we know that we were right on the main street where the trucks come past, so we just chilled out there for what seemed like eternity but it was actually about 3 hours. Our main source of entertainment was the "palo jabón", similar to the greasy pole. The goal is to climb a greased pole with a ham on top. As this happens, the crowd work into a frenzy of singing and dancing while being showered in water from hoses. Once someone is able to drop the ham off the pole, the start signal for the tomato fight is given.This sounds pretty straight forward but oh my god this took forever. Instead of working as a team and climbing on each other shoulders to reach the top, the stupid egotistical drunk men just shoved people out of the way and climbed over each other to get to the top. Eventually this young Spanish guy got the ham, (and it was a full leg of ham which would have been quite heavy) and the crowd went mental. He crowd surfed down the whole street (Hamish touched his foot) to great applause.
After exactly one hour, the fight ends with the firing of the second shot, announcing the end. To be completely honest Lou was quite glad it was the end. She was freezing, smelly and really needed to pee. Due to the sheer volume of people, it took us forever to get back to the station where we could get some food and go to the loo. A lot of people seemed to be keen to hang around and have a few more drinks but we were pretty keen to get out on one of the early trains.
As we were in Spain, there are always funny rules. Like at the train station, it really didn't matter how filthy you were, as long as you had a shirt on. And some of the stupid boys in the crowds think it's a good idea to rip their shirts off and throw them round. And so the enterprising locals in Bunol set up T shirt stalls right next door….
We got back to Valencia about 4pm and had long hot showers and a wee nap due to the day's excitement.
We decided to treat ourselves for our last night on holiday and went in search of an authentic Valencian meal. We set off around 7pm, pretty hungry at this stage and to our disappointment hardly any of the good restaurants were open (they didn't open till 8pm).
So we ended up settling for a cheap place that did a set menu that we could understand. We knew it would be poor quality but bread, a starter, main, pudding and a glass of wine all for 10 euros ain't bad. Lou had the paella and felt pretty good about how much better the one that she makes is. The rest of the meal was forgettable except for the Catalonian cream that Lou had for desert. It's basically the Spanish version of crème brulee, very very yummy.
We strolled back to our hotel and had a much deserved early night.
Highlight: Being part of a world renowned festival!
Lowlight: Lou froze for a good 2 hours. Not fun. Also the Aussies making noise….shhhh
Interesting Fact #1: The village cobblestone in the Bunol streets are pristine due to the acidity of the tomato disinfecting and thoroughly cleaning the surfaces.
Interesting Fact #2: 30,000 cram into the little village square and surrounding roads
Interesting Fact #3: 125,000 kilos of tomatoes are thrown in an hour.
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