Crazy Tomatoes (Tomatina ´09)

Before I get into my three days in Cheste/Bunol, I´d like to give a bit of an update of plans. I have decided to head to Geneva, and thanks to Pat, I shall have a pretty awesome place to stay. However, for the time being I´m in Valencia as I could not get a train to Barcelona until tomorrow. I´m not complaining by any means, Valencia is very beautiful and I´m excited to go roam around. Now, what you were waiting for, my three days leading up to and including, La Tomatina.

I arrived in Valencia around three thirty and as usual, it was quite a warm day. I had no idea on how to get to this small town Cheste, until I arrived at the train station and saw that I could take the metro there. Unfortunetly my directions weren´t fantastic as I got off of the wrong station because the metro pulled a U-ey to go out to Cheste and Bunol. No worries though, I just back tracked until I got to the appropriate station.

Once I arrived in Bunol, it was around 5 in the afternoon, and for those of you who do not know the Spaniard way of life, this is prime Siesta time. While I had no idea as to where the street was where my hotel was located, nothing was open for me to shuffle in and ask in my broken spanish for directions. Fuck (sorry grandma). As I drifted aimlessly for an industrial way, I happen to notice a middle aged woman and her teenage daughter exit from there home. A sign of life! I asked them where it was, and they proceeded to ramble of a list of directions in spanish with some hand gestures of walking. I let them know I didn´t speak spanish, thanked them for their efforts, and continued to drift. As I was walking away, I heard them whistling at me, turned around and they were pointing to their car. Bless those two lovely ladies, they gave me a quick five minute ride to the front steps of my hotel, that otherwise, would´ve been a massive ordeal to find.

I took a day of rest in my comfortable, one person, air conditioned hotel room and gave Tom a call. Him and his siter were camping outside of Valencia, and thinking of spending the night in a park in Bunol to escape the traveling crowd the next morning. Unfortunetly we had no way of meeting up that night, or the next day, because the mayhem that ensued would have certainly led to the demise of our cell phones.

Eight O´clock the next morning was my arrival time in Bunol. After seeing the way the metro had been packed full of people like a brand new pack of cigarettes, I had a feeling I wasn´t going to find Tom. First order of business was to get myself a litre of beer. Strange thought at 8 in the morning, but I was going to a giant food fight in a foreign city; there was no time to consider the ordinary. By the time I reached the city center, it was already packed with people, mostly drunk, and mostly Australian. I heard a giant roar ten minutes later, as the crowd was reacting to the raising of the greased pole with the ham on top that started the festival. I figured the pole would be 15-20 feet high, but no, it was a respectable 30 feet high. There was so much grease on the pole, that it looked like a pretzle stick that had been covered in frosting.

While my competitive side was screaming and kicking at myself inside, when I saw the Bros that were attempting, and failing miserably, to climb the pole, I decided to hold back as to some what insure that I left Bunol with all of my teeth. After about an hour and a half of failed pole climbing, the cannon went off, and the trucks of tomatoes started to drive down the old cobble stonned street, with the rest of us wackos standing on a 5 foot wide side walk. When there´s an estimated 40,000 people, one would wish that the side walk be twenty feet, but I guess we just delt with it.

It´s very difficult to describe what happened the next, as it seemed to be a giant red haze. If you look it up online, you might be able to understand a little better, but it was simply a bunch of people being sprayed with water and having tomatoes chucked at them. Some times it got in your eyes, which stung. Some times it got in your mouth, which tasted like BO. Regardless, it was the craziest festival I´ve ever, and probably ever go to and it was a blast. I can´t get the smell of tomatoe off of me, I keep finding seeds in strange places, I had an amazing time, and I will never do it again.