la tomatina

the tomato fight
After two hours of sleep, we dazedly crawled onto the bus and caught as much sleep as we could on the way to Buñol. When we arrived we staggered off the bus again and headed down the windy road into town with 60 thousand other crazies like ourselves.

Locals had set up little stalls selling goggles, swimming caps, t-shirts, food and cheap beer. As we ambled down the road we came across a lot of costumes, including some drag queens, a guy wearing goggles, snorkel and a giant floatie, and I posed for a photo with a group of poms wearing orange wigs and white cricket gear. The atmosphere was charged with expectation and trepidation. So far, not a tomato to be seen.

The tiny town square where the fight takes place was already packed by 9am and the fight wasn't to start until 11. Sticking with five other girls from my tour group, I picked out a spot in a sidestreet near a wall. So began the warm up to the main event.

Some crazy local guys near us started the annual tradition of t‑shirt ripping early, t‑shirts went sailing through the air and more and more guys ended up bare shouldered, Some girls were also attacked but most of us were wearing at least two shirts and a sports bra, some had even duct‑taped their clothes to their bodies. One girl was completely unscathed except for the skin on her knuckles, which had done battle with many a Spanish nose, and won. Some people were standing calmly while others were singing and dancing and pushing. We were jostled for 2 hours, the crowd getting crazier and crazier, the locals getting scarily over the top.

Before the fight even began we saw a girl faint, several broken noses, someone break into a nearby house and throw bits of the door from the balcony into the crowd (a group of Aussie guys tossed it back and hit the guy on the head, before the police arrived and arrested him). Some forgetful local had left their window open and their white couch glistened in the sunlight, enjoying its last few moments of pristine cleanliness before a world of tomatoes ruined its beauty.

All this time, the competition to capture the ham was in progress. There was a wobbly pole with a ham stuck on top and a lot of very smelly fat all up and down it to make it slippery. Guys and some girls clambered over each other to pull off globs of fat in their hands and render the pole climbable enough to finally reach the ham. Finally it was touched, which signals the start of the fight and the tomato trucks rolled in.

My rib cage was nearly squashed when the trucks rolled past, dumping tonnes of tomatoes into the crowd. The first tomato bounced off someone's head near me and a friend giggled as she squashed it into my hair. We all got a bit dirty and then the tomatoes ran out. We stood around, waiting, grinning at our first taste of the fight. Truck two rolled past, more of the same, until finally truck three dumped its load and suddenly we were in a river of tomato juice halfway up our shins. The white wall behind us was splotched with red, our hair was disgusting, our faces were covered, our goggles saving our eyes from the acid.

I don't know, or want to know, what I ingested that day as torn t‑shirts were thrown through the crowd, landing on faces, heads, shoulders. I kept my mouth closed as tightly as I could and watched the madness of the centre of the square.

Suddenly a friend materialised and said 'come into the middle, it's awesome!'. I grabbed her hand and we slipped through the tomato‑juice lubricated crowd into the middle of the mosh pit.

At this point the madness really began. We were all covered with tomato, it was in our hair, our ears, our nostrils, our mouths, our shoes. I was wading through a lake of tomato juice, slipping against body after body, not even throwing tomatoes because my main mission was just to stay upright. My arms were around the shoulders of the nearest tall guy and my legs were wrapped around whoever was standing nearest to me. My mine‑site issue steel caps were doing their job very well. I laughed when some British guys near me said "man this is insane, I want to get out of here, these people are nuts, I'm scared."

Eventually I squeezed out of the crowd into the street and joined the other tomato‑pasted zombies. People's eyes widened when they saw me so I got the impression that I was fairly tomato‑ed. When I got in line for the first hose (the locals water everyone down after the fight) the girls in front of me said "oh my god, you should go first, you need it more". Sadly my disposable camera was out of film by that point so I couldn't capture the moment forever.

The rest of the day was spent picking tomato seeds out of my hair, washing and re‑washing my underwear (still smells like tomato juice, might have to accept that it's time for it to go)
and sleeping.

La Tomatina was some of the best fun I've ever had. Welcome to Spain.