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| From Pamplona |
I was having the best sleep of my life at Camping Ezcaba, until my watch suddenly awoke me at 3:30 in the morning.
Damn.
Did I really want to get up for this? Was it really worth this much effort to see a bunch of bulls whiz by? Eric seemed to be dragging as well. Our sleeping schedule over the past few days had been chaotic, and we could use a few days or normalcy. But that would have to wait. We were now on Pamplona time, where you were supposed to stay up all night, and spend the morning and afternoon hours recovering.
So we made it to our 4:00 bus, got into Pamplona shortly after, and then wandered the streets to check out the lunacy. The parties were still raging in the streets, and people were looking pretty wasted. By 5:00, the street cleaning crews were starting to make their rounds and spray the layer of human sludge off of the streets to clear the way for the bulls. Eric and I wandered all the way to the start of the running, where the bulls were all housed. They were peacefully looking out of their pens, wondering why the drunk frat boys were yelling "toro" at them at such an early hour of the morning. We then walked down the entire route of the running: up the cattle ramp, over to Dead Man´s Curve, then down the straight-a-way as it curved into the stadium. We saw a free spot on the barricades down near the stadium, so we decided to plop our butts up on it and wait for the big show.
Sitting up on a wooden plank for over 2 hours is literally a pain-in-the-ass. I came up with a great way to make money off this event: design a spectator chair that can rest on top of the plank. I would have paid dearly for a chair like that. So for 2 hours, we stayed up there, occasionally moving around to get the blood flowing to our posterior region. We had two American girls from Texas sitting next to us on our left, so I chatted them up for awhile on all things Dallas since they were from there. They had just graduated from school as well and were doing a whirlwind trip of Europe in a month. They told us they had spent $280 at a hotel in Pamplona, just to get 3 hours of sleep there. We told them that they were crazy. We then mentioned how we had spent the night in the park...and they looked at us like we were crazy. Yep...we probably should have just shut up about the park...they didn´t talk to us much after that. Probably thought we were a bunch of nasty bums. Oh well.
As we waited for the running, all the drunk nutballs were gradually being forced out of the streets by the police. One merrimaker had a giant stuffed soccer ball (or futbol as known here) similar to the crappy large plush animals you get for knocking down milk bottles at carnivals. He started kicking it within the barricades where the bulls would run, and within seconds, an improptu futbol match began in front of us. Drunk fans started cheering and falling on their prats as they tried to kick the ball in the air. Within minutes, the plush futbol became a dirty sangria soaked rag as it rolled about the streets. They kept aiming it towards my head, so I had to deflect it with my fist to avoid getting splattered in the face. The futbol game must have continued for 30 minutes before the ball suddenly deflated and went limp. The fans were devastated and continued trying to kick it, but it was no use. Game over.
About this time, the red berets went through the middle of the barricades, shoulder to shoulder, kicking out anyone still lingering in the streets. Paramedics and camera crews appeared in front of us, taking their positions. Then around 7:40, all the delusional runners came out, yelping and screaming and taking their positions along the street. Most were still looking hammered, but they appeared to be happy.
Finally at 8:00, the first firework went off, and then the second, and within a minute, people once again started running quicker and quicker past us, until suddenly it was an all-out panic as if a tsunami was about to hit the coastline. And then, within a matter of seconds, the mass of bulls went through. It happened so fast that it was hard to get good pictures of it. You just aimed and hoped the shutter on the camera went off at the right time. Then all the runners trailed behind the bulls and entered into the stadium.
After about a minute of the runners disappating, I figured the run was over, so I jumped off the barricade. Then suddenly, more runners started going berzerk, and I realized that ANOTHER bull was still out there roaming the streets, so I jumped back on to see it, but by then it was already in the stadium being penned up.
And that was it. I had finally witness an official "Running of the Bulls." It seemed rather anticlimatic. You expected to see these bulls up close and really doing some damage, but they go by so quick. When Eric and I went to the Plaza del Castillo, they were playing video footage of the whole event on large jumbotrons, and you could really get a sense of what had just happened. In slow motion, we got to see one of the guys get tossed to the ground by a bull, and then stepped on and bit by it. It was much more exciting seeing this on huge video screens than what we had witnessed live.
Eric and I then randomly ran into a guy from Berkeley, CA and a guy from London who were backpacking together. They had just pulled into town and we were giving them advice on where to go in Pamplona. Both of these guys had just recently hiked up to the Base Camp of Mt. Everest, which after reading "Into Thin Air" by Jon Krakauer, is much more insane than doing a running of the bulls. We buddied up with them for an hour, took them to the grocery store to stock up on food, and then went to go find our bus stop to get back to the campground...but got lost. Pamplona is one of those screwy little towns with fountains at every street intersection that all look alike. So it´s easy to get confused and get lost.
So, we ended up missing our bus and had to hang out in Pamplona for another two hours. I had bought some cereal and some cold milk in a bag (not a box, surprisingly) at the store, anticipating that we´d be back at the camp to enjoy some big heaping bowls of cereal. But now we were stuck in Pamploma, and my milk was starting to get warm and needed to be used up. And I was REALLY hungry. So I poured out half the cereal into a grocery bag, then poured the milk into the cereal bag and used that as a poor excuse for a bowl. And since we had no spoon on us (oh, I would have died for a spoon), I had to slurp the cereal up through the bag. People passing by on the street were giving me really strange looks. I felt like such a homeless person, just trying to survive with the minimal stuff I had on me. Eric tried eating cereal out of a grocery bag, but it turned into a disaster when the bag leaked. Oh, the things you do when you´re hungry for a bowl of cereal.
After witnessing the big head parade go through again and whack the kids upside across the head, we finally caught the 12:00 bus to the campground. On the bus, some fellow campers were starting to get goofy. One Spanish guy with a stuffed cow started goosing everyone in the rear with the cow. He then had the cow nibble on Eric´s baguette of bread. Then he motioned me forward and said, "Rrrun! Rrrun!" So not wanting to offend him or his culture, I ran in slow motion through the middle of the bus, while the stuffed cow chased after me, gaining quickly on me. I did a slow motion fall onto the bus aisle, and the stuffed cow went down on me, goring me in the gut with its pillowy soft horns. Everyone in the bus was loving it.
Then the Spanish guy approached Eric and said the same thing: "Rrrun!!! Rrrun!!!" Eric was stubborn and wouldn´t budge with all of his groceries. Then the Spanish guy kept prodding him to run, until Eric finally gave in and ran down the aisle of the bus being chased by the raging stuffed cow. Oh, it was comedy at its finest.
Back at the campsite, I went to the front office to check in for an additional night. A couple of Brits waiting in front of me were playing the ukelele and singing a drinking shanty, until the lady at the desk told them to shut up. Then they turned to me and told me to drink from their sangria bladder (it´s another wacky tradition during San Fermin to drink sangria from a leather bladder that hangs from the side of your hip. You´re supposed to aim the nozzle of the bladder toward your mouth, and then keep pulling it away so a long stream of sangria is pouring into your mouth without spilling on your clothes). At first, I declined. Then they kept egging me on, and I´m not one to offend, so I said "All right already!" and tried my hand at it. Surprisingly, for my first attempt, I had a pretty long stream of sangria pouring into my mouth without any spillage at all. Then all the Brits cheered triumphantly for me. It was quite the cultural exchange.
Eric and I then crashed in our tent for a few hours, ate a bocadilla, stuffed our pockets full of sangria and beer, and then took the bus back to Pamplona to see the bull fight. Our bus was running late, so when we finally made it into the stadium at 18:45, nearly 15 minutes after it started. When we made it into the stands, I could not believe my eyes or ears.
The whole stadium was roaring with cheers. Bands were playing marching tunes. The energy in the stadium felt like a college football game...times 100. I asked the usher where our seats were, and he motioned to the stands, telling me to sit anywhere. I looked up in the stands, and they were already bursting forth with people. If I had seats up there somewhere, they were already long taken. Eric and I made an attempt to find some seats in the stands, but within seconds, an entire cup of sangria flew at me and smashed across the back of my head, dribbling sticky alcohol down my neck. I then realized that I was screwed, so Eric and I went back the way we came in and squatted down near the entrance of the upper deck.
All around us, food was flying everywhere. People were throwing sangria on anything white that just happened to walk by. Everyone was a bullseye just waiting to get pommelled with whatever food item was handy to throw. I had overheard from another traveller that they throw sangria at these bull fights, so I showed up not wearing white, but (lucky me) my sangria-colored maroon shirt. Doing so probably made me even more of a target in the sea of sangria-stained white, but I didn´t care. Whatever they threw at me wouldn´t show. I was ready for the food fight.
Within minutes, the first bull fight began. Even though I´m not a big fan of watching bulls get killed in a ring, I wanted to experience this part of Spanish culture to try to understand a major part of their lives here. In my opinion, it´s not really much of a "fight" going on there in the ring. It´s pretty unevenly matched, if you ask me. You´ve got several people who keep poking the bull with metal spikes attached to poles, so the bulls lose more and more blood until they become weak and disoriented and just follow the matador´s cape on the ground until the matador finally stabs a long sword through its body, thus slicing up the internal organs of the bull as it´s still walking, causing it to fall to the ground and go through death spasms. There´s not much "sport" in that. It would be more of a fight if you put the bull unharmed in the ring with a matador and see if the matador could survive that for at least 5 minutes. Once you start introducing knives and swords, there´s just no challenge anymore. Get Bear Grylls from "Man vs. Wild" in that ring, and I´ll betcha money that crazy Brit will have the bull pinned to the ground within minutes and will be tearing into him with his bare teeth.
So as the bull fights were going on, the spectators were singing bull fighting songs at the top of their lungs. It was loud and intense...probably the same sort of energy that you feel at the futbol games here in Europe. In between each bull fight, the bands would play, and the people would fling more food and go crazy. A lot of the people around me were wearing white lab coats because they knew they would get trashed with sangria. A couple of times, I got beaned in the head with an orange slice or two. Anytime I´d stand up to take a picture, someone in the audience would see that as a target and try to throw sangria on me. So I had to be quick and duck a lot. For the most part, I was out of range and didn´t get clobbered too much by food. One of the pleasant surprises that we noticed at the bull fight was the communal nature of the spectators there. The people around us were sharing all their food that they brought in with them, like this was a giant potluck dinner. We had meatballs, sangria, chocolate and some other edibles that were passed our way. And it was all pretty good stuff, too.
During the third or so bull fight (it´s hard to know for sure with the sangria you´re consuming), we watched the matador get gored by the bull and crumple to the ground while the bull kept pushing on him. They had to bail him out and the matador had to walk away injured. When this happened, the whole audience erupted in cheers and applause with the "Ole! Ole ole ole! Ole! Ole!" song that you always pair at futbol (soccer) matches. I was confused at first, because I thought the people were cheering for the matador. But then this Mexican tourist in front of me explained that the spectators are actually rooting for the BULL, not the matador. I never would have expected that. I guess it´s kind of like watching a car race, where you´re hoping to see a big nasty crash, but with the driver walking away alive.
So the rest of the evening, I was cheering for the bulls, even though I knew full well that they didn´t stand a chance next to a giant sword thrust through their hearts. You feel sorry for those bulls, and there´s a little bit of a suspension of disbelief going on. Immediately after they fall, they´re dragged quickly from the ring by a team of horses, so your mind still thinks that they´re alive, even though they aren´t.
After leaving the stadium soaked and reeking of sangria, we wandered the streets of Pamplona for a few hours checking out the partying going on in the streets. Eric had a little too much to drink, so I served as the designated walker for the evening and made sure we got back safely to the campsite on the right bus. We made it in to the campsite about 2:00 in the morning, and then crashed in our tent, exhausted from exposure to too much bulls for one day.
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