Ok so the next few blogs will be a recap of trips I took before I deployed. First up is the trip to Valencia, Spain, including the side trip to Bunyol for the focal point of our visit – La Tomatina. For those of you not familiar with La Tomatina, it is the largest tomato fight in the world! Thousands of people from all over the world (though mostly backpackers from Australia it seemed) pack into one tiny Spanish town to launch tomatoes at one another. Who wouldn’t want to go?!?!

Drew, Gretchen and I flew out of Milan and landed in Valencia Spain a few hours later. I was pleasantly surprised at how modern and clean Valencia is. I knew little about the city before our arrival…just what Gretchen read from her guide book on the plane. This was very limited as Drew and I spent most of our time coming up with conspiracy theories regarding what the true meaning behind the song “Domani”. Anyway we landed and found our way down to the train station. The train system was fairly intuitive. A few lines all color coded with a detailed map in the station. After purchasing fare and picking up a system map in the shape of a lollipop, we headed to our apartment. Gretchen found a 1 br apt to rent for a few days in lieu of getting a hotel room. This ended up being MUCH cheaper and included a nice rooftop deck with outdoor shower (we would later find out it was integral to washing encrusted tomato off pretty much everything). The only downside to this place was the fact that it was on the top of a seven story building with no elevator. This wouldn’t have been so bad except for the fact that I am notorious for packing the most impractical shoes for travel.

After unloading luggage and paying the landlord, we decided to explore. Valencia has an amazing dichotomy of modern structures on one end of town with ancient architecture on the other.

Fountain located in the Virgin's Square

To complete our day, we visited the natural history museum where we learned that Velociraptors were really giant flesh eating birds. I dont think the curators ever saw Jurassic Park or they would know that this isn’t a novel idea. Sam Neil taught me this in grade school. We also went to the aquarium where I learned that I would like to own my own penguin someday… Oh, then we went dancing until 3am. The next day we toured and planned our travel arrangements to Bunyol.

Besides looking awesomely sci-fi. these contraptions allowed us to hear the dino-movie in English.

Shark Attack!

The morning of the actual fight, we took the earliest train out of Valencia possible in order to get a good location (i.e. near the town center and in the path of the tomato trucks). The ride was less than an hour and we were one of the first to arrive in the tiny town of Bunyol. The locals were well prepared for the mass ingress of tourists/back-packers/and would-be tomato fighters. Most of the actual stores were closed off and had store front booths selling food/drink/and souvenirs in the form of t-shirts, cd’s, etc. We all had a large meat sandwich and sangria for breakfast. It was delicious. The town started to fill up so we made our way to the spot Drew had researched a few days before. Most of the buildings in this area were covered in tarps and huge sheets of plastic which reached over 3-4 floors at a time. We situated ourselves in front of the town hall about 50ft from the ham pole. The ham pole is simply a telephone pole covered in lard and stood upright for people to climb in an attempt to get a whole ham tied to the top. I’m pretty sure this ceremony was designed to keep the masses from getting bored and unruly while waiting for the fight to start. Before you ask, no I didn’t attempt the pole but did find a nice youtube video from this year that depicts it fairly well:

POLE

No one successfully retrieved the ham (and really, who wants a ham that has been hanging from a pole in the heat for 4 hours) by the time the fight started. The next video shows the sheer pandemonium better than I ever could:

FIGHT

When the fight started I was next to Gretchen and Drew but that didn’t last very long. The surge took on a life of its own and we became part of the mass of moving bodies, unable to really control where we went or what was going on. Part of it was disconcerting, the other part was just exhilarating. We wore goggles to keep the acid out of our eyes but soon realized that seeing out of them after tomato juice caked on was impossible and it was hard to keep them on. I abandoned them five minutes into the fight. The fight itself lasted much longer than I thought it would. The dump trucks came by multiple times with multiple loads of tomatoes. By the end the streets were flooded with tomato juice, trash, and a random assortment of clothing/shoes that people had torn off and threw in the middle of the fight. (I kept all my clothes thank you very much). As soon as the fight was over, voices came over the loud speaker and said something over and over again in Spanish. I can only assume it was telling everyone it was time to leave. We had to wade our way back to higher ground and find a way to clean ourselves off. We weren’t allowed back on the train until we had cleaned all the tomato chunks (which at this point had begun to dry and stick to everything) off our clothes, skin, and hair. The locals lined up with hoses to take turns hosing us down…unfortunately they mostly delighted in just spraying us in the face and not really cleaning us off. We eventually found a spigot and cleaned up as much as possible. I abandoned my socks. The train ride back was crowded and I slept through most of it.

Mid-fight!

Waiting for the train

The tomato fight was a great experience, but I think it’s something I’d only ever want to experience once in my life. It was simultaneously invigorating and exhausting. Valencia was a beautiful city that I probably never would have explored outside of the fight. Bunyol was…well Buynol is a tiny town that somehow gained a niche in the world via food fighting. The town itself is unremarkable but I applaud them for getting hundreds of thousands of people packed in for one big produce tossing event.

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