And so the story of Spain continues. In this chapter, Lucy, Callum and your story teller get on a bus and head to Valencia.
It seems that the Spanish travel service have not figured out how to use the internet yet. Everyone time we went to book something via the internet, our transaction would be cancelled at the last minute. Despite having three different money cards from three different banks and trying multiple companies with each of these, no-one wanted to take our money, or more importantly, sell us a ticket. Because of this, we decided to buy a ticket the old fashioned way, just walking to the station and giving them actual money. We scored ourselves three 25 euro tickets to Valencia.
The departure date wasn’t for another two days and in that time, Lucy somehow lost our tickets. We didn’t realise until 30 minutes before the bus was due to leave that they were gone and therefore missed that bus. Callum and I got on the 1pm and Lucy jumped on the 3pm. Four hours of bus ride later we arrived in Valencia. And while we sank a few coldies until Lucy arrived, it occurred to us that Valencia, somehow, was hotter than Madrid.
Lucy arrived and the fun began. Our accommodation was through a tour company called “Fanatics” an entirely Australian owned, operated and used company (Unbeknownst to us at the time of booking). For the next three nights, we were booked into camping tents in the sweltering heat. The campsite also happened to be in the absolute middle of no-where. On paper, it was going to take us about an hour and a half to two hours max to arrive at the campsite from the bus station. In reality, it took us closer to five hours. According to Google maps, the city bus would take us for almost an hour and a half and our campsite would be a five minute walk. Apparently not so we found out. It turns out that we were the only campers who decided to use public transport to the campsite…for a reason. Everyone else caught a taxi from the station and it only took them 45 minutes. After getting off our city bus, we asked someone for directions, and it sounded close, but we ended up walking on highways, through hotels, past drive-in cinemas and were almost killed by dogs, trucks and motorbikes. I would love to say that I am exaggerating, but we literally had to spend an hour walking along-side a VERY busy highway. Eventually we made it, tired, smelly, annoyed and more than anything, bloody hot. Our bags aren’t exactly filled with feathers and I will never whinge about having to lift it ever again after what we went through that day.
About 30 minutes away from the campsite, we could tell that we had made it. Not by any lights or signs, but by the yelling and music. More specifically, what was being yelled and what music was being played. Even from 2km’s away, you could hear the Australian buffoon’s yelling “Let’s get F%#&cked uuuuuuup!!” and “Scull scull scull scull scull!!!”.
On arrival, Callum and Lucy were given a tent to themselves and I was to share with someone, and when I discovered that my tent had a code pad-lock on it put on by my new tent mate, I wasn’t particularly impressed. To get away from the bogans and crappy music, the three of us fled to the beach which was conveniently only 5 minutes away. After spending 3 months in the UK, and another month before that without a beach, I was really craving a swim in the ocean. On our arrival to the beach, we were greeted by a big, fat, squishy jelly fish that had washed up on shore. Whether or not it was dangerous, I still have no idea, but for the time being, I decided it was best not to go for a swim.
Returned to the campsite even more depressed, I decided it was time for bed, but on my return to the tent, my tent mate still hadn’t arrived. I felt like having a big, fat, squishy cry, but decided to go and tell reception instead. They moved me to another tent, a bit closer to Callum and Lucy, and on opening the fly, I discovered I had that big boy to myself!! My mood had a complete turn around. The only thing hotter than the temperature was the temperature inside the tent, but it didn’t matter, I could have a sleep to myself.
I awoke the next morning to discover my travel buddies gone and so I took the opportunity to go for a stroll along the beach by myself. Walking down the trail to the beach, I could again hear the Australian’s before I arrived. I decided to take my stroll elsewhere along the beach, far, far away from anyone who says oi, mate, bloody or any of the swearing that has to be used 5 times in a sentence. While walking away from the Australians, I noticed a lot of the chaps trying to get views of all the topless girls who were about 150 metres away. To do this, they had to squint and when they found a new one, they would all yell, shout and point at her. Spain is a dream for the desperate.
As I trudged along the beach in my singlet, boardies, moustache and sunnies, I crossed various sections of the beach. After the Australians there was A LOT of open sand, where no-one seemed to be sitting for some reason (Probably because the Aussies were there). Further along was the family section where there were only families and children running around. All the children had this pong game where you have two flat bat things (Kind of like tennis rackets but made of wood or plastic) and you hit a squidgy ball to each other. There is no real point to the game except keeping the ball in there air. I thought it was brilliant and I wanted a set. Even further along was the nudist section. Needless to say only 5% of the people who were in this section were under 40, but to me it made it even cooler. It almost inspired me to rip of my clothes and show everyone my lilly white bum, legs and willy, but two problems faced me. One, I didn’t want to end up with a shrivelled red willy, and two, I’d just have to walk along with all my stuff in my hands, which would look idiotic and not exactly convenient. I figured that I’d already been naked a couple times on the trip, so that would have to do for now.
This pattern continued over and over again and all of a sudden I felt a surge of thirst, like to the point where I felt like passing out, so I decided to walk up off the beach and look for a shop. I remembered at this point that we were in the middle of bloody no-where. There seemed to be plenty of holiday homes and hotels strangely enough, but no normal convenience stores or supermarkets. Before I died, I decided it was time to head back. I’d walked a very long way though, and I was beginning to think that maybe I should just make the most of my last minutes and go for a swim. Just as I was taking off my singlet, I saw a little blue tent in the distance. It was on the beach so I decided to go and have a look. This thing sold water, ice cream, soft drinks, snacks and beer! Strangely enough, beer was the cheapest thing on the list, cheaper than water! I bought myself a little can of Heineken and little bottle of water and I was good to go again. Sitting in the cool water with a little can of icy cold beer surrounded by topless Spanish girls in the hot sun was my kind of day. Even if a jelly fish came up and stung me, I couldn’t have been upset. After I finished the water and beer I set off again for the journey back home.
I passed all the same Spanish people but with a few new additions. There was some guy in the nudist section on a sun chair/bed thing who had his legs spread for all to see and was facing it all towards my direction. I looked that way at the precise moment when he flipped his wang over to brown the other side I suppose. To me, it looked like he thought of his willy as a sausage that needed to be cooked on all sides. I didn’t enjoy this. Only 20 metres away was some woman who had her girly bits pointed UPWARDS to the sun and had her legs spread. Why the hell would you need to tan that? This being said, they all had lovely tans and didn’t have those stupid white bits like everyone else in the world.
After making it back to camp, I found Callum and Lucy and the first thing they said was “What the hell happened to you?”. It turns out I didn’t put any sunscreen on and apparently my sunburn was pretty bad. Everyone who I passed at the campsite said the same thing. I didn’t notice how bad it was until I started feeling not very good, so I went and sat in the campsite pool which again was full of Australians, and by now, the pool had an oily coat on the top and there were chunks of bubbly foam on the surface, something that I would expect to see in the ocean when the fish have their breeding season or something. It was disgusting, yet everyone was still swimming.
Waking up the next day, we all jumped on the bus at 6:30am. A very early time for a lot of people as most of them go to bed at 4am. Our tomato throwing festival was not in Valencia, but a little town called Bunol, which was about 45 minutes away. We arrived at about 7:30 and followed to the crown to the town centre. Along the way, there were little BBQ stalls set up every 10 metres, and there were people on the streets selling goggles, ear plugs, swimming caps, everything that you could think of to protect yourself against tomato seeds. There were also an incredible amount of make shift bars set up selling 500ml cups of Sangria or beer for like 2 Euro. Brilliant pricing, but alas far too early for the three of us to start drinking.
After a half an hour walk from the bus, we finally made it to the city centre, where we found more Australians, but people from all over the world. When it came to the highest percentage of a nation, the Spaniards were probably the only contenders for Australia. At the top were Aussies and Spaniards, then Americans and Canadians, then the Asians, then the Irish, English, Italians and then everyone else.
After probably an hour of waiting around for something to happen, a big wooden pole arrived with a leg of ham attached. We had all heard of it, but now it was in action. As the tomatoes don’t arrive until 11am, the slippery pole game is put into action to keep everyone occupied. Basically, the pole is covered in a fatty, greasy substance and at the top of the pole is the ham. Whoever can climb to the top of the pole and get the ham, wins the ham. It was brilliant fun watching, but frustrating at the same time. Team work was the ONLY way to get the ham, but everyone wanted it for themselves, probably mostly for the glory rather than the ham. Some people figured out how to do it and would start building a human pyramid and just as it was getting high enough, some annoying Asian man would start ripping people off the pyramid and would try to get the ham for himself…And would fall to the ground and hurt himself. Everyone bloody time it was getting high, an Asian would destroy it. I don’t consider myself a racist person, but Jesus…EVERY TIME!!
My picture is a bit crappy because we were in a pretty crappy position.Callum was starting to suffer from claustrophobia and therefore we moved ourselves from the thick of it all to the side street away from it all. Along the street here we saw all the inhabitants setting up huge blue tarps in front of their houses. After a while the hoses came out. From the rooves, all the owners had buckets of water and hoses, spraying all those, like us, below. They seemed to love it and thought it was hilarious. For us, it was sensational, because the sun was out and blazing and down on the ground, we were frying up like little eggs.
I thought it was a good idea to bring my camera, wallet, sunnies and towel. My theory was that it probably wouldn’t be that wet and everything would be fine if I just put it in my toiletries bag, seeing as that’s kind of water proof. Yes well...
11am came and everyone watching the ham moved into the street that we were standing in, so any chance of getting rid of the claustrophobia was out the window. There seemed to be more people, but in a smaller space. In the distance at the end of the very long street, we saw it. A big blue truck full of smelly rotting tomatoes was on it’s way down the street, and in the back were about 20 Spaniards, throwing arm-full’s of tomato off the sides of the truck. Some of the people in the back were absolutely launching the red juicies, launching them so hard that if one hit you in the eye, it would definitely leave a bruise if not make you blind. When I thought of a tomato being thrown at my head, I pictured it exploding on impact and me standing there laughing. It’s not like that at all. When the tomatoes hit, especially when you don’t see it coming, it feels like a really hard punch, and depending on the size, it sometimes feels like a sledge hammer. Some of them REALLY hurt. When the truck finally passed us, we all spilled into the middle of the street and war broke out. Before I knew it my ankles were covered in a chunky soup and tomato was in every crevice and orifice I can think of. Every one. I was exhausted by the end of the first round, but then I looked at the end of the street and sure enough, there was another truck.
Some girl I had been gazing at for most of the day threw a couple tomatoes directly at my face, and I thought my nose would start bleeding, but I took this as an indication that she liked me, so I scooped up some of the soup and put it on her head and it went all over her face and she wailed like a 3 year old. She’d also decided to wear make-up this day, so mascara was running halfway down her cheeks and she looked more like a screaming banshee than a lovely girl, so I decided to leave her alone.
Although these aren't my pictures, this is pretty much exactly what it looked like, except there were chunks of tomato in your eye, so you couldn't REALLY open them.
Probably the most brilliant thing about all of this was that I only knew Callum and Lucy, whom I pretty much didn’t even look at through the fight. No-one in the rush knew each other, and yet after throwing tomatoes really hard at each other, everyone still thought it was great fun. I didn’t see a single fist being thrown or anyone getting angry, although I did notice a lot of upset people by the fourth truck. After 45 minutes of constant tomato in your face, I could understand why you’d want it to stop. A chap came up to me with a 500ml cup of tomato and decided to pour it on my head, rub it in, and press, squeeze and roll it all into my dreadlocks. At this point, I realised that I had also had enough and was ready for it to stop.
Seconds later a shirt soaked in tomato came flying from 20 metres away and lobbed me in the head. It took me off my feet and I landed face first in the soup. If someone stood on me, I would have drowned in tomato. By now the soup came up past my knees and there was still another 15 minutes and two trucks to come.
I retreated to the street wall to find Callum with his hands over his face and half-crouched, because if he crouched anymore, his face would have been in the soup. There was a lot of tomato in my eyes and it was starting to hurt. Everyone who was wearing goggles decided to ditch them because they couldn’t see anything through them. Little did they know that things looked exactly the same without them on.
At 12 o’clock the bell rung and the whistles blew. This meant that all tomatoes or tomato juice was to stay on the ground. No more throwing. Thank the good lord. Looking around, it looked like a war field. Red was everywhere, people were crying and everyone just had a generally dreadful look about them. Then the sun hit.
All we wanted to do was have a shower and get this bloody stuff of us, so we had to escape the street. But everyone wanted to do it at the same time. There were at least 50,000 people in this street and everyone was walking the wrong way. Only one end had an exit and so it took over an hour AFTER the fight finished to escape. This meant that the tomatoes had dried on our skin, clothes, and my dreads.
Walking away from the fight, the locals had their hoses and were standing in the streets spraying off all the dirty tourists. It was brilliant and they seemed to enjoy themselves doing it. The entire city was disgusting and just smelt of boiling tomato soup from the sun. On arrival, the tomatoes had already spent five days driving through Portugal and Spain in the back of the trucks through the blistering sun and were already starting to rot. In a liquid form I’m sure they were rotting faster because the scene smelt awful.
These pictures were taken AFTER our hosing unfortunately. The result of the fight was pretty spectacular, but because of that, I couldn't really handle the camera until we were cleaned off.
My shoes were white before the festival. Lucy's were always red. Can you guess which one's are mine?
Back on the bus and back to the campsite, Callum and myself bought some 1 litre beers for a Euro each and hit up the beach. Despite all the jelly fish on the beach, we couldn’t see any in the water, so we jumped in and had a ripping good time getting all the tomato skin and bits out of our hair.
My sunburn was scorching and killing me the entire day and I spent the remainder of the sunlight with a wet shirt on my shoulders and a wet piece of cloth on my face. Within 30 seconds, the clothing was as hot as my skin and I would therefore have to stick it in some water again. It was bloody awful. We didn’t take any pictures unfortunately, but it was definitely one of the worst sunburn experiences I’ve had in my life.
After all the excitement, the three of us decided that since we were in Valencia, we may as well actually see the place, so the next day we headed off for the city and checked into a hostel. That story can wait until the next blog.
Cheers boyyzzzz!
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