For those of you who navigated to this page in the hopes of finding Shaun White's gingerfied mug shot, well tough noogies. Instead you're about to embark on a magical journey through a land of B.O., pink eye, Along Came Polly, and enough tomatoes to make the world's biggest bowl of marinara.
Since living in Europa, the Broo-says have attended their fair share of festivals: Feria...Oktoberfest...San Fermin...Semana Santa...Three Kings. As you may have read, each has given us their fair share of memories, laughs and hangovers. We've experienced quite a bit in our days abroad, but there was one festival that was going to be the cherry on our Fiesta sundae: Tomatina in Buñol.
For those of you who have been living under a rock for life, Tomatina is known as the "world's largest food fight". As part of Buñol's annual festival, truck loads of tomatoes are dumped in the streets for people to go nuts with. Although it sounds like absolute chaos, it's all actually very structured. The fight officially begins when someone manages to climb to the top of a soaped up ham pole. As much as I'd like to claim that's a sexual innuendo, it actually is a pole that is set up in the middle of the town square and is rubbed with soap and topped with a jamon leg. I have no freaking idea how that tradition started, but I am tickled it did. How often do you get to say, "soaped up ham pole"? Unless you're referring to a scene from Magic Mike? Once someone shimmies to the top of the pole and knocks down the ham, a cannon booms. That's the signal for everyone to just go nuts throwing tomatoes. The fight lasts for an hour and ends with the second boom of the cannon. In between the cannon booms is sheer madness. And we lived it.
Tomatina is always on the last Wednesday of August. Having something on a Wednesday probably limits the amount of people who can attend, but that's probably intentional. Buñol is a small village about 30 minutes outside of Valencia, and the population is only about 9,000. Every year Tomatina brings in about 50,000 visitors to crowd into its narrow streets. Can you imagine Pamplona sized crowds for this? It would be sheer misery.
Since Labor Day was the following Monday, El, Stu, Emily and I decided to drive to Valencia for the fest and then road trip along the Mediterranean coast until Monday. We decided to leave work on Tuesday afternoon, spend Tuesday and Wednesday in Valencia, drive to Alicante for Thursday night, and then spend the weekend in Cabo de Gata Natural Park, hiking and relaxing. Ever since I saw pictures of the beaches and cliffs of Cabo de Gata in our Lonely Planet Andalucia book, I've wanted to spend a weekend there. It just looked absolutely gorgeous, and I really wanted to do some hiking and outdoor activities while in Spain. Since it's a 4 hour drive from here, it's not really practical to just do a day or short weekend trip there, and our 3-day weekends were usually spent flying somewhere in Europe. Tomatina gave us the perfect excuse to finally visit this natural beauty. No, not THIS natural beauty.
We left Tuesday around 3:45 for a 6 hour drive to Valencia. Valencia is the third largest town in Spain and is located on the East coast, about 3.5 hours south of Barcelona. The drive wasn't bad at all, and it went by quickly by playing "Name that Tune" (which featured classics by the Zach Attack and MC Hammer). Our hotel, Vincci Palace, was in the heart of what looked like Valencia's financial district, and was as jazzy as all the other Vincci hotels we've stayed at. Except that this one stunk like diarrhea. How does one review that on booking.com? "A mysterious odor wafted through the halls... one that brought to mind thoughts of the Hershey squirts...." After checking into our toilet, we searched for a place to grab a bite and some drinks. We wandered into a bar that had a Guinness sign, thinking that it would be an Irish pub. Umm, it was exactly the opposite: super swanky and James Bond themed. There was even a lamp MADE OUT OF A PISTOL. Fancy. After only living twice, we grabbed some food at this placed called Nam. I ordered an "avocado flatbread" which turned out to be a toasted tortilla topped with a crap ton of guacamole. Dinner of champions!
Tomatina wasn't scheduled to start until 11am, but our Pamplona experience told us to get there at least 2.5 hours early. Since we were driving, we wanted to leave plenty of time for parking, walking to the fight, and grabbing a beer or two. Based on my San Fermin experience, I refused to not have a beer in hand when dealing with potential tomfoolery. We had also heard that traffic would be bad from Valencia to Buñol, and we would be red-hot pissed if we missed the whole thing due to traffic.
After a 12 euro breakfast that we thought was included in our hotel price (whoops!), we headed out at 8:00am sharp. It was only a 25 minute ride, and we encountered zero traffic. There were two entrances into the town, and one was already closed by the time we got there. The second one led us to the outskirts of town, so we parked in a field where a bunch of tour buses were located. We were actually glad to park on the outskirts, as it would be a helluva lot easier to get out after the fight.
Speaking of tour buses, there were TONS of them lining the streets. Rota's MWR (Morale, Wellness and Rec) Center actually organized a bus trip to Tomatina, and a few of our friends went on it. It was an 8 hour bus ride though, and I can't even imagine getting on a bus completely covered in tomatoes. Blergh. As we walked into town, the streets were lined with tables set up with beer, bottles of sangria, t-shirts and "cubbies". There were signs advertising "We'll watch your bag and keys!", and long lines of people willing to take them up on that offer. We thought ahead and had only decided to bring the car keys with us. I also somehow found a waterproof DISPOSABLE camera to capture the memories; this freaking thing was so big it was like a brick. I had forgotten the joys of winding the camera and holding down the flash every time I go to take a picture....
Much like Pamplona, people had already been partying for a few hours. We saw people wearing t-shirts discolored by wine, dancing to the club music blasting out of huge stereo systems set up on the side of the road. Unlike Pamplona, however, people weren't fall over shit-faced; people were drinking, but they weren't sloppy and barfing in the street like at San Fermin. THANK GOD.
We grabbed beers from this cerveceria that had set up an outdoor bar, and walked past crowds of people speaking English and wearing their brand-spankin'-new Tomatina shirts. We decided to wait until AFTER the fight to buy some, as we would like to actually save the shirts we bought. We had thought ahead to wear old clothes, and I looked like a jewel in my oversized Margaritaville tshirt, old sneakers, and junk store pants that had a hole in the crotch. I full intended on tossing my rag tag ensemble after it was attacked by killer tomatoes.
We got to the little bridge that crossed into the streets where the fight would be held and were stopped by the cops holding the passage. We saw people chugging their booze before crossing the bridge, so we assumed that there was no alcohol allowed in the actual fight. Thinking this was the case, we finished our beers before crossing. Of course we saw peple who still had bottles of sangria and cups of beer AFTER we crossed, and we cursed ourselves for freezing our brains by drinking the cold beer too fast. Boo-urns!
There is basically one long, but narrow, street that leads to the town square with the aforementioned soapy ham pole. The streets are lined with apartment complexes and local businesses. All the doors have been shuttered, and most of the buildings have been covered with tarp, but there were a few people standing on the balconies or roofs of their apartments pouring water on the crowds below. And good lord, did they need it. The crowds were so thick, and the temperature so hot (mid-90's), that everyone was pouring sweat and emitting stink lines of B.O. To get a break from the hot sun (and from each other's stink), the crowds started chanting, "Agua! Agua!" and cheered when the residents obliged them. The four of us pushed our way through the crowd to try to get closer to the main square. We made it a pretty decent way, and we eventually stopped at a point where we could see the ham pole from a distance. It wasn't worth squeezing past sweaty people just to get a few feet closer. On the way, we passed a group of young people from DC, and they poured sangria from their bottles into Emily's and my mouths. We are some classy broads. We also started up convos with these two short, young girls who were visiting from Seattle. Once the fight started, we quickly became their bodyguards as they were getting swept up in the crowd.
The street was literally wall to wall people, with everyone jumping up and down, cheering "Ole! Ole! Ole! Ole!" and chanting to the tune of Seven Nation Army (which always strikes me as so bizarre). The body stink was pretty rancid, but everyone was pretty tame (shit-faced wise). One huge guy was really drunk though, and started pin-balling his way through the crowd. He pushed Emily over, tearing her shorts right down the butt, leaving her with a pair of assless chaps (Sorry Will :). He also stomped on the inside of my left ankle and crushed down on it every time he moved. I hysterically yelled, "Get the fuck off my ankle!!!!" and pushed him until he finally was off. I was so afraid he was going to break it, and I'd be stuck in a crowd of thousands with a broken ankle. Fortunately, it wasn't broken, just bruised to shit. Other than Strong Belwas crushing my leg, the atmosphere was fun and you could feel the excitment grow as it got closer to 11am.
Where we were standing, we had the unfortunate luck of being right under the window of someone pouring down water. With all the people chanting for agua, we were SOAKED before the cannon even boomed. Not just a little wet, I'm talking sopping, clothes weighed down kinda wet. But there were so many people crammed in that little narrow street that you couldn't do anything but take it.
From our vantage point, we could see people attempt to reach the ham leg. People would make it about halfway up before someone below would grab their leg and pull them off. The cannon finally boomed when some guy managed to fight off the people below him to be the first to reach the sacred leg of ham.
The SECOND that cannon boomed, hoses from apartments sprayed down on the peple below, and people on roofs started throwing tomatoes onto the streets. The crowd moved with one another to lunge for the tomatoes that were bouncing off people's heads and arms. Elliot kept getting nailed in the face, and I laughed every single time it happened. I got hit with a few tomatoes and was able to toss a few of my own, but the tomatoes on the roof ran out in less than ten minutes. "Is that it????" we all asked each other. I could feel my temper flaring up, and I was just about to go off into a tirade of , "I DIDN'T GET TO SEE A FREAKING BULL IN PAMPLONA, AND AM I SERIOUSLY NOT GOING TO GET TO EVEN THROW TOMATOES IN BUÑOL? WHAT THE F???!!!!" when we looked ahead of us and saw a green dump truck headed our way.
Now, the streets were packed to begin with, and now we had to get on the sides of the road to let the truck pass. How the hell does that happen? Well it happened all right, and the crowd split down the middle and everyone sardined onto the building walls on either side of the narrow street. If we thought we were close to people before, this was a totally new ballgame. I was cheek to bare shoulder of the guy in front of me, and Stu had an Along Came Polly moment when the hairy guy next to him jumped up and his sweatered back slid up Stu's cheek. Fortunately for us, the truck passed through very quickly, and the people in the bed were throwing out armfuls of tomatoes onto the crowd. UNFORTUNATELY for us, the tomatoes were not ripe in any sense of the word, and I got nailed in the eye when I took my goggles off to clean them. It actually stunned me for a second, and I thought I'd have to wear a condom on my left eye and be CrazySexyCool like TLC.
The crowd started scrambling for the tomatoes on the ground, and I "dove" down to grab armfuls of ammo. Unlike the rest of the crowd, we took the time to squish each tomato before we threw it, thus saving the eyeballs and noggins of our fellow fighters. People seemed to single out the tall guys, and Stu became a prime target for many of the revelers. Right about the time the first truckload of tomatoes ran out, we pressed up against the building for the second truck of Roma tomato death.
I was in the front of the crowd on our side of the street, so I was right up next to the truck as it came through. At first, I was terrified of being run over, but Elliot was holding me in a death grip to ensure that didn't happen. Whatta Prince Charming he is! The truck stopped right in front us, and the space between the cab and bed was directly in front of me. The people across the street were so squished, they were just sitting ducks. While the truck was parked, I grabbed armfuls of tomato (now ankle deep and more like tomato soup from the water spraying down) and launched handfuls at the sacrificial lambs across from me. Laughing maniacally, I was FINALLY getting a golden opportunity to be a tomato queen.
Once the truck passed, the fight got REALLY GOOD. The water spraying down made the tomatoes into a soup that was now calf-deep, and everyone was completely drenched in red. Everyone was laughing and going wild throwing fistfuls of tomato and water at the people around them. A guy on his buddy's shoulders became the prime target, and everyone tried their best to nail him good. A third truck came through, and the amount of tomatoes thrown grew exponentially. We were just going nuts throwing the goods, laughing hysterically the entire time. Nobody thought twice about reaching down into the cesspool of dirty tomatoes and water to fling at the person next to us. I didn't even flinch at grabbing tomatoes covered in dirt and shoving them into someone's hair. There were festival lights hanging across the street, and people threw their tomato-soaked shirts and shorts onto them. There were a few rogue shirts thrown, and all four of us got slapped in the face with one at some point during the hour-long fight. It was disgusting, messy, claustrophobic, and AWESOME.
After one more truck came through, it was utter chaos until we heard the second cannon boom. Some British girl just smashed a handful of tomatoes in my face, laughing hysterically at my reaction to getting a tomato facial from a stranger. I didn't think that you did something like that to total strangers, but whatever. When in Rome! When we heard the second cannon boom, we all dropped our tomatoes, raised our arms in the air, and clapped and cheered. An occasional stray tomato flew across the crowd, but everyone was really good about ending the fight when they were supposed to.
There was only one way out of the area, and everyone immediately started pushing towards the direction of the bridge we crossed earlier. You were really helpless as you became part of the human wall that rode a wave of tomato juice towards the various side exits up the street. You had to surrender to the pushing, and you became very close with the people around you very fast. I do not recommend someone who is claustrophobic to do Tomatina; you would have a panic attack :/
We broke through the crowd at the first side exit we could find and made the walk back to the car. Kind residents had stations set up to hose off the casualties, and we had some old woman hose us off the best she could before we kept walking to the car. Everyone was covered head to toe in tomatoes, and all clothing was dyed pink. My hair was a helmet by this point, and I didn't even want to think about how much urine and spilled booze was nesting in my follicles. We passed delicious smelling vendors selling hot dogs, burgers, and chorizo, and laughed at all the people who were now missing articles of clothing and shoes. I somehow lost my goggles in the foray, but I fortunately didn't have any Girls Gone Wild moments.
We had some issues finding the car at first, and we mistakenly cut through a field, only to emerge into a parking lot and cut through a random group of people smoking pot. We probably looked quite the sight, covered in tomatoes and emerging randomly from a field. We eventually found our car thanks to Stu's navigational skills, and we all changed into the spare set of clothes we brought with us. As you can imagine, we all stunk to high heaven and were completely covered in lycopene. For the rest of the night, our eyes (except Elliot's because he claimed to have superior genes) watered and gooped like we had pink eye. I honestly thought I had pink-eye at first, and I started to panic over trying to find a Spanish doctor in Valencia.
The shower I took when we got back to our hotel was the most satisfying and glorious I've had in a long time. Although it took a good 30 minutes to wash my hair, there were seeds all over the tub and tomato bits stuck in my brush after I combed through it. Despite scrubbing myself clean, my armpits still managed to dye my deodorant a lovely shade of orange.
In hindsight, I can't believe I did something that disgusting: There was probably salmonella and SARS flying through the air during Tomatina, and I was probably covered in other people's nastiness. I'm glad I didn't think about all that while having my face smashed with urine-soaked tomato juice. It's really not something anyone likes to think about. But I did it, and I crossed it off my European bucket list. But I will never be attacked by killer tomatoes again......
Since living in Europa, the Broo-says have attended their fair share of festivals: Feria...Oktoberfest...San Fermin...Semana Santa...Three Kings. As you may have read, each has given us their fair share of memories, laughs and hangovers. We've experienced quite a bit in our days abroad, but there was one festival that was going to be the cherry on our Fiesta sundae: Tomatina in Buñol.
For those of you who have been living under a rock for life, Tomatina is known as the "world's largest food fight". As part of Buñol's annual festival, truck loads of tomatoes are dumped in the streets for people to go nuts with. Although it sounds like absolute chaos, it's all actually very structured. The fight officially begins when someone manages to climb to the top of a soaped up ham pole. As much as I'd like to claim that's a sexual innuendo, it actually is a pole that is set up in the middle of the town square and is rubbed with soap and topped with a jamon leg. I have no freaking idea how that tradition started, but I am tickled it did. How often do you get to say, "soaped up ham pole"? Unless you're referring to a scene from Magic Mike? Once someone shimmies to the top of the pole and knocks down the ham, a cannon booms. That's the signal for everyone to just go nuts throwing tomatoes. The fight lasts for an hour and ends with the second boom of the cannon. In between the cannon booms is sheer madness. And we lived it.
Tomatina is always on the last Wednesday of August. Having something on a Wednesday probably limits the amount of people who can attend, but that's probably intentional. Buñol is a small village about 30 minutes outside of Valencia, and the population is only about 9,000. Every year Tomatina brings in about 50,000 visitors to crowd into its narrow streets. Can you imagine Pamplona sized crowds for this? It would be sheer misery.
Since Labor Day was the following Monday, El, Stu, Emily and I decided to drive to Valencia for the fest and then road trip along the Mediterranean coast until Monday. We decided to leave work on Tuesday afternoon, spend Tuesday and Wednesday in Valencia, drive to Alicante for Thursday night, and then spend the weekend in Cabo de Gata Natural Park, hiking and relaxing. Ever since I saw pictures of the beaches and cliffs of Cabo de Gata in our Lonely Planet Andalucia book, I've wanted to spend a weekend there. It just looked absolutely gorgeous, and I really wanted to do some hiking and outdoor activities while in Spain. Since it's a 4 hour drive from here, it's not really practical to just do a day or short weekend trip there, and our 3-day weekends were usually spent flying somewhere in Europe. Tomatina gave us the perfect excuse to finally visit this natural beauty. No, not THIS natural beauty.
We left Tuesday around 3:45 for a 6 hour drive to Valencia. Valencia is the third largest town in Spain and is located on the East coast, about 3.5 hours south of Barcelona. The drive wasn't bad at all, and it went by quickly by playing "Name that Tune" (which featured classics by the Zach Attack and MC Hammer). Our hotel, Vincci Palace, was in the heart of what looked like Valencia's financial district, and was as jazzy as all the other Vincci hotels we've stayed at. Except that this one stunk like diarrhea. How does one review that on booking.com? "A mysterious odor wafted through the halls... one that brought to mind thoughts of the Hershey squirts...." After checking into our toilet, we searched for a place to grab a bite and some drinks. We wandered into a bar that had a Guinness sign, thinking that it would be an Irish pub. Umm, it was exactly the opposite: super swanky and James Bond themed. There was even a lamp MADE OUT OF A PISTOL. Fancy. After only living twice, we grabbed some food at this placed called Nam. I ordered an "avocado flatbread" which turned out to be a toasted tortilla topped with a crap ton of guacamole. Dinner of champions!
Tomatina wasn't scheduled to start until 11am, but our Pamplona experience told us to get there at least 2.5 hours early. Since we were driving, we wanted to leave plenty of time for parking, walking to the fight, and grabbing a beer or two. Based on my San Fermin experience, I refused to not have a beer in hand when dealing with potential tomfoolery. We had also heard that traffic would be bad from Valencia to Buñol, and we would be red-hot pissed if we missed the whole thing due to traffic.
After a 12 euro breakfast that we thought was included in our hotel price (whoops!), we headed out at 8:00am sharp. It was only a 25 minute ride, and we encountered zero traffic. There were two entrances into the town, and one was already closed by the time we got there. The second one led us to the outskirts of town, so we parked in a field where a bunch of tour buses were located. We were actually glad to park on the outskirts, as it would be a helluva lot easier to get out after the fight.
Speaking of tour buses, there were TONS of them lining the streets. Rota's MWR (Morale, Wellness and Rec) Center actually organized a bus trip to Tomatina, and a few of our friends went on it. It was an 8 hour bus ride though, and I can't even imagine getting on a bus completely covered in tomatoes. Blergh. As we walked into town, the streets were lined with tables set up with beer, bottles of sangria, t-shirts and "cubbies". There were signs advertising "We'll watch your bag and keys!", and long lines of people willing to take them up on that offer. We thought ahead and had only decided to bring the car keys with us. I also somehow found a waterproof DISPOSABLE camera to capture the memories; this freaking thing was so big it was like a brick. I had forgotten the joys of winding the camera and holding down the flash every time I go to take a picture....
Much like Pamplona, people had already been partying for a few hours. We saw people wearing t-shirts discolored by wine, dancing to the club music blasting out of huge stereo systems set up on the side of the road. Unlike Pamplona, however, people weren't fall over shit-faced; people were drinking, but they weren't sloppy and barfing in the street like at San Fermin. THANK GOD.
We grabbed beers from this cerveceria that had set up an outdoor bar, and walked past crowds of people speaking English and wearing their brand-spankin'-new Tomatina shirts. We decided to wait until AFTER the fight to buy some, as we would like to actually save the shirts we bought. We had thought ahead to wear old clothes, and I looked like a jewel in my oversized Margaritaville tshirt, old sneakers, and junk store pants that had a hole in the crotch. I full intended on tossing my rag tag ensemble after it was attacked by killer tomatoes.
We got to the little bridge that crossed into the streets where the fight would be held and were stopped by the cops holding the passage. We saw people chugging their booze before crossing the bridge, so we assumed that there was no alcohol allowed in the actual fight. Thinking this was the case, we finished our beers before crossing. Of course we saw peple who still had bottles of sangria and cups of beer AFTER we crossed, and we cursed ourselves for freezing our brains by drinking the cold beer too fast. Boo-urns!
There is basically one long, but narrow, street that leads to the town square with the aforementioned soapy ham pole. The streets are lined with apartment complexes and local businesses. All the doors have been shuttered, and most of the buildings have been covered with tarp, but there were a few people standing on the balconies or roofs of their apartments pouring water on the crowds below. And good lord, did they need it. The crowds were so thick, and the temperature so hot (mid-90's), that everyone was pouring sweat and emitting stink lines of B.O. To get a break from the hot sun (and from each other's stink), the crowds started chanting, "Agua! Agua!" and cheered when the residents obliged them. The four of us pushed our way through the crowd to try to get closer to the main square. We made it a pretty decent way, and we eventually stopped at a point where we could see the ham pole from a distance. It wasn't worth squeezing past sweaty people just to get a few feet closer. On the way, we passed a group of young people from DC, and they poured sangria from their bottles into Emily's and my mouths. We are some classy broads. We also started up convos with these two short, young girls who were visiting from Seattle. Once the fight started, we quickly became their bodyguards as they were getting swept up in the crowd.
The street was literally wall to wall people, with everyone jumping up and down, cheering "Ole! Ole! Ole! Ole!" and chanting to the tune of Seven Nation Army (which always strikes me as so bizarre). The body stink was pretty rancid, but everyone was pretty tame (shit-faced wise). One huge guy was really drunk though, and started pin-balling his way through the crowd. He pushed Emily over, tearing her shorts right down the butt, leaving her with a pair of assless chaps (Sorry Will :). He also stomped on the inside of my left ankle and crushed down on it every time he moved. I hysterically yelled, "Get the fuck off my ankle!!!!" and pushed him until he finally was off. I was so afraid he was going to break it, and I'd be stuck in a crowd of thousands with a broken ankle. Fortunately, it wasn't broken, just bruised to shit. Other than Strong Belwas crushing my leg, the atmosphere was fun and you could feel the excitment grow as it got closer to 11am.
Where we were standing, we had the unfortunate luck of being right under the window of someone pouring down water. With all the people chanting for agua, we were SOAKED before the cannon even boomed. Not just a little wet, I'm talking sopping, clothes weighed down kinda wet. But there were so many people crammed in that little narrow street that you couldn't do anything but take it.
 |
| Before the carnage.... |
The SECOND that cannon boomed, hoses from apartments sprayed down on the peple below, and people on roofs started throwing tomatoes onto the streets. The crowd moved with one another to lunge for the tomatoes that were bouncing off people's heads and arms. Elliot kept getting nailed in the face, and I laughed every single time it happened. I got hit with a few tomatoes and was able to toss a few of my own, but the tomatoes on the roof ran out in less than ten minutes. "Is that it????" we all asked each other. I could feel my temper flaring up, and I was just about to go off into a tirade of , "I DIDN'T GET TO SEE A FREAKING BULL IN PAMPLONA, AND AM I SERIOUSLY NOT GOING TO GET TO EVEN THROW TOMATOES IN BUÑOL? WHAT THE F???!!!!" when we looked ahead of us and saw a green dump truck headed our way.
 |
| Oh hell yes, this is really happening! |
The crowd started scrambling for the tomatoes on the ground, and I "dove" down to grab armfuls of ammo. Unlike the rest of the crowd, we took the time to squish each tomato before we threw it, thus saving the eyeballs and noggins of our fellow fighters. People seemed to single out the tall guys, and Stu became a prime target for many of the revelers. Right about the time the first truckload of tomatoes ran out, we pressed up against the building for the second truck of Roma tomato death.
I was in the front of the crowd on our side of the street, so I was right up next to the truck as it came through. At first, I was terrified of being run over, but Elliot was holding me in a death grip to ensure that didn't happen. Whatta Prince Charming he is! The truck stopped right in front us, and the space between the cab and bed was directly in front of me. The people across the street were so squished, they were just sitting ducks. While the truck was parked, I grabbed armfuls of tomato (now ankle deep and more like tomato soup from the water spraying down) and launched handfuls at the sacrificial lambs across from me. Laughing maniacally, I was FINALLY getting a golden opportunity to be a tomato queen.
Once the truck passed, the fight got REALLY GOOD. The water spraying down made the tomatoes into a soup that was now calf-deep, and everyone was completely drenched in red. Everyone was laughing and going wild throwing fistfuls of tomato and water at the people around them. A guy on his buddy's shoulders became the prime target, and everyone tried their best to nail him good. A third truck came through, and the amount of tomatoes thrown grew exponentially. We were just going nuts throwing the goods, laughing hysterically the entire time. Nobody thought twice about reaching down into the cesspool of dirty tomatoes and water to fling at the person next to us. I didn't even flinch at grabbing tomatoes covered in dirt and shoving them into someone's hair. There were festival lights hanging across the street, and people threw their tomato-soaked shirts and shorts onto them. There were a few rogue shirts thrown, and all four of us got slapped in the face with one at some point during the hour-long fight. It was disgusting, messy, claustrophobic, and AWESOME.
After one more truck came through, it was utter chaos until we heard the second cannon boom. Some British girl just smashed a handful of tomatoes in my face, laughing hysterically at my reaction to getting a tomato facial from a stranger. I didn't think that you did something like that to total strangers, but whatever. When in Rome! When we heard the second cannon boom, we all dropped our tomatoes, raised our arms in the air, and clapped and cheered. An occasional stray tomato flew across the crowd, but everyone was really good about ending the fight when they were supposed to.
 |
| Boom goes the dynamite |
There was only one way out of the area, and everyone immediately started pushing towards the direction of the bridge we crossed earlier. You were really helpless as you became part of the human wall that rode a wave of tomato juice towards the various side exits up the street. You had to surrender to the pushing, and you became very close with the people around you very fast. I do not recommend someone who is claustrophobic to do Tomatina; you would have a panic attack :/
We broke through the crowd at the first side exit we could find and made the walk back to the car. Kind residents had stations set up to hose off the casualties, and we had some old woman hose us off the best she could before we kept walking to the car. Everyone was covered head to toe in tomatoes, and all clothing was dyed pink. My hair was a helmet by this point, and I didn't even want to think about how much urine and spilled booze was nesting in my follicles. We passed delicious smelling vendors selling hot dogs, burgers, and chorizo, and laughed at all the people who were now missing articles of clothing and shoes. I somehow lost my goggles in the foray, but I fortunately didn't have any Girls Gone Wild moments.
We had some issues finding the car at first, and we mistakenly cut through a field, only to emerge into a parking lot and cut through a random group of people smoking pot. We probably looked quite the sight, covered in tomatoes and emerging randomly from a field. We eventually found our car thanks to Stu's navigational skills, and we all changed into the spare set of clothes we brought with us. As you can imagine, we all stunk to high heaven and were completely covered in lycopene. For the rest of the night, our eyes (except Elliot's because he claimed to have superior genes) watered and gooped like we had pink eye. I honestly thought I had pink-eye at first, and I started to panic over trying to find a Spanish doctor in Valencia.
The shower I took when we got back to our hotel was the most satisfying and glorious I've had in a long time. Although it took a good 30 minutes to wash my hair, there were seeds all over the tub and tomato bits stuck in my brush after I combed through it. Despite scrubbing myself clean, my armpits still managed to dye my deodorant a lovely shade of orange.
In hindsight, I can't believe I did something that disgusting: There was probably salmonella and SARS flying through the air during Tomatina, and I was probably covered in other people's nastiness. I'm glad I didn't think about all that while having my face smashed with urine-soaked tomato juice. It's really not something anyone likes to think about. But I did it, and I crossed it off my European bucket list. But I will never be attacked by killer tomatoes again......
 |
| Pink (eye) Bandits |
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