Running of the Bulls Pt 1

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San Fermin…..I’ll be honest, it’s pretty hard to describe this festival and truly do it justice. I think this blog entry needs to be written with a couple of warnings:

1.     If you’re someone who enjoys a bit of action, or loves a good party, or is an adrenaline junkie, or if you have a heart beat and enough youth to survive a week of carnage, then this blog will be a completely inadequate representation of just how large an experience San Fermin is. You just need to go and see it yourself.

2.     This blog contains death….like videos of death. And boobs. Though just pictures of boobs. And the boobs and death aren’t simultaneous so you wont get any weird hangups. It’s not exactly my most PG rated of blogs.

3.     This blog will probably be pretty long, and may ramble and contain very amateur philosophy. I apologise in advance.

So. San Fermin. I had just spent a great time with Rosy in London, and it was very very hard to leave. Life was very good with Rosy in her Fulham mansion, and I had sort of lost my backpacker gritiness and had become somewhat acclimatised to the good life. This wasn’t the best preparation for San Fermin. I had decided to go with a tour group for this trip – Festival Adventures. The main reasons for this was that the hostels, hotels, campsites, and couches had all been booked up about 11 months earlier. I also had no idea about the festival and so I figured I should go with some people who knew what they were doing. I chose Festival Adventures because the only other option I found was The Fanatics, and I really didn’t want to hang out with the same bogans I had escaped Australia to avoid. And it worked pretty well. Our group had only a few Aussies, who were all pretty cool, a few Kiwis, and some poms. Anyway, it was pretty standard fare for a festival tour group. We had a 23 hour bus trip from London to Pamplona, during which our french bus drivers got horrendously lost even though all they had to do was go south; the ordeals of a 23 hour bus trip revealed the people on the tour who were chilled out, and those who were whinging pessimists; we were staying in camp grounds which started out looking pretty good, with nice toilet facilities, and by the end looked like a refugee camp with one functioning toilet which still had faeces smeared in inconceivable places. All standard festival fare.

Anyway, I tell you this briefly because, frankly who cares. One thing that really bothered me about the Fanatics tour group for this festival (they were in the same camp site as us) was that they had their own stage set up with DJs and musicians performing each night, and most of these Aussie travellers ended up travelling to one of the most unique and carnal festivals, located on the other side of the world, and all they did was hang out at a campsite and party with a bunch of Australians. I feel like remaining in the campsite for too long, whether it’s in physical or blog form, misses the point.

So. San Fermin…. The festival is a celebration of Saint Fermin, a guy who from what I can recall came to the town and magically everyone who was sick became well, and all the crops that were failing began to flourish. You know, that old story. So to celebrate this they drank copious amounts and got gored by bulls. I feel like I may have a missed a vital link there, but who cares. It works for me. The festival goes for about ten days (This isn’t a travel brochure, you can wiki the exact details if you want), and it can be broken down into the following main features.

THE OPENING CEREMONY

I’m sure this has a proper Spanish name, but we knew it only as ‘The Sangria Fight’. To open the festival, everyone crams into either the main town square where there’s a massive stage set up with a big screen, or into the square in front of the Mayors’ house. The front of the Mayors’ house is the main attraction, and the square is packed by 9am, yet somehow continues to fill up even more right until the 12pm opening ceremony. To prepare for partying on the opening festival you need the following:

White T shirt

White Pants (this is where Nadal must’ve gotten those ¾ pants he wore in his early career)

Red Sash/Belt

Red Neckerchief (worn around the wrist until 12pm)

Money hidden in your shoes (the little ninos run around between the drunken revellers and grab anything in your pockets…they stole my bloody asthma inhaler!)

Sunglasses (For protection from projectiles more than the sun)

And most importantly, 5 x 2 Litre bottles of Sangria.

The Sangria was incredible. It cost 2 euros per bottle (although this price seemed to be inflated to anywhere up to 8 euros depending on how drunk/American the individual buying it was), it tasted like sweet nectar at the start of the day, but made your toungue feel furry after about 1 litre, and by the end of the day you peed red, made a grimacing expression every time you took a swig, and your teeth were so full of cavities that your dentist would have to clear his schedule when he next sees you. But luckily you didn’t actually end up drinking your 10 litres of fruity goodness. I think the average person drank about 2 Litres of their own stock, about 1 Litre of other peoples, and the rest was used to drench each other.

Before

After

So for three hours we stood in an ever increasingly crowded square, drinking sangria, and drenching any late comers who happened to still have white clothes. It was also a chance for the girls whose fathers didn’t give them enough attention to finally get the adulation they desired, by jumping on a guys shoulders, getting absolutely showered in sangria by everyone nearby, copping the occasional sangria bottle or shoe to the head, all to the chants of ‘TITS TITS TITS TITS’ (Yeh, Aussies aren’t the most creative chanters in the word), and then finally pulling their shirts up while screaming ‘WOOH SPRING BREAK!’ to the cheers of the drunken crowd.

The best day of that guy on left's life.

 In between the girls showing their talents, there was also frequent chanting of the tune Seven Nation Army by the White Stripes, with everyone in the square bouncing up and down while sangria was thrown overhead, beach balls being bounced, people in the balconies overhead pouring water onto the crowd below, and the Basque seperatists holding aloft banners supporting their independence. Some idiots even took the opportunity to crowd surf over the perfectly packed mosh pit below.

After three hours of this, and with the square now so tightly packed that you could literally take your feet off the ground and be held up for about 30 seconds without coming down again, the Major finally came out on his balcony to open the festival. This guy makes Major Quimby look positively perk free. He comes out and shouts to the crowd who, if they are able to free their hands as the crowd surged back and forth, are by now holding their red scarves about their heads ‘VIVA SAN FERMIN’, ‘GORA SAN FERMIN’, which the crowd drunkenly shouts back to him, and that’s it for his official duties, so he starts lighting fireworks on his balcony and sending the rockets up into the sky.

Hurry up, hand me the rest of the fireworks. I have a bunga bunga party to be at in an hour.

Apparently the first  rocket was to signal the festival officially open, but the old guy just keeps going for the next 30 minutes. After this the crowd disperses and everyone is left to try and find their friends who they innevitably lost once the crowd started swaying from side to side, and the medics can finally get to the pickpocketing kids who have been trampled under the masses.

The rest of the day is just carnage. People are passed out before 12pm (the night before was a pretty big party for most people as well) and just lying all over the town square.

2pm. Hey at least one of em got lucky.

 The tapas bars and pubs are all overflowing with people drinking and dancing. One of the craziest sights that starts around about 2pm is an Australian tradition (the Spanish come to watch, but have nothing to do with it) of jumping off the statue outside of Oyster bar. Apparently there have been some pretty horrific injuries from this, and you can see why. Everyone in the photos below are so unbelievably drunk that it is a miracle anyone got caught, but amazingly the worst injury I saw was when a guy slipped while climbing up the statue; once you reached the top you were fine.

I managed to stay out the whole day, which was quite an effort, but which was very rewarding. Most of the foreigners went back for a siesta around the early evening, meaning I got to actually meet and party with some locals (I can’t stress enough just how many Aussies there were here. The festival was about 50/50 Spanish and Aussie, with a smattering of Brits and Americans thrown in). Aussies tend to fall into two categories of drinkers. Those who chill out and drink all night, don’t get wasted,  but also don’t do anything that will make it into stories to be told for years. Then there are those who drink alot, get extremely lashed, and create memories that ironically only they wont remember. The Spanish manage to combine the best of these two, and as a result are unbelievably fun, while not ending up punching each other by the end of the night. Despite the fact that I was sticky from head to toe with sangria, could only communicate with locals through mime and broken spanish, and was surviving on about 3 hours sleep, this day is easily one of the most fun parties I’ve ever experienced.

THE RUNNING OF THE BULLS

The running of the bulls is essentially just a way to transport the bulls from their pen on one side of the town, to the bull ring for their bull fight that evening. The bulls were made to run so that punters could see the speed and form of the bulls so they could make educated bets on the bull fight that night (No idea what you bet on, the Matador is like the Harlem Globe Trotters, you know he’s going to win). As far as I can tell from old photos, people running with the bulls started as a tradition when a couple of Australian tourists who were unaware that the bulls would be fighting that night, were wondering the streets looking for cheap tacky souveniers. As the bulls rounded the corner they had no option but to try and run away. After surviving, and receiving the adulation of the lovely local senoritas, the local men realised that this was a great way to pick up chicks, and so from then on would try and outdo each other with acts of bravery, running closer and closer to the bulls, and even getting the occasional goring if the senoritas that year were particularly beautiful.

So there I was, watching this foolish tradition, safely from behind the fence. As the signal sounded to indicate the bulls had started (another fire cracker lit by the mayor, naturally) all of a sudden the fence next to me gave way and 5 orphan children and the nun taking care of them suddenly plummeted into the middle of the bull run. The other runners, too preoccupied with their own safety didn’t notice them, and so I was forced to jump onto the track and rescue them one by one. As I pulled the last child and the nun to safety over the barrier the first bull rounded the corner, and with one last effort I pushed them out of harms way, and was forced to start running next to the speeding bulls… And that mother, is why I ran with the bulls. You can skip the next paragraph or two….and the video.

Running with the bulls is easily the scariest thing I’ve ever done. I can’t even think of anything that would compare. I’ve done some stupid things before, but it’s always been under my own control, not leaving my fate resting on the flippancy of a 600kg battering ram. I had been advised by my good friend from Spain that I should get some rest the night before and be sober for the run, and so I actually got a relatively early night (about 2:30am). The run itself is at 8am, and people begin cramming in around 6am. With the party still raging from the night before at this time, it was pretty common to see people with a little dutch courage under their belt, stumbling their way into the bull run.

Now this will be quite foreign to lawsuit/health and safety obsessed Australia, but here is the basic set up of the run. There are two rows of barriers lining the track on each side(although in some spots it’s just the facades of the surrounding buildings). Between the two barriers are medicos and police. After that it’s just swarms of people crowding to see the chaos. To run you need to be wearing white with the red neckerchief and belt, and in theory you should be sober and not have a camera on you. Before the run, the police do throw out a couple of people for having cameras and the odd drunk, but for the most part they don’t really care. To run, all you need to do is jump through the barriers and you’re in. No waivers signed, no ID checking (you’re also supposed to be over 18). The town acually pays for all injuries sustained during the bull run, no questions asked (anaesthetic is extra though). Once you are in, you have the most nervous 2 hour wait of your life. It’s also pretty painful as generally you’re hungover as hell, and unbelievably tired. I ran on a Sunday, which meant it was pretty busy, as the majority of locals tend to only run on the weekends. This meant that the police pick a point where they just cut everyone off and make them leave the track about 10 minutes before the start, leaving only those further back to run. Once the run starts the cops will pull anyone out who is panicking or who wants to come out. By anyone I mean girls. If you’re a guy and you try to climb back out, the police will whack you with their batons, gesture at you their perceived size of your genitalia, and throw you back in the middle of the track. The only real rule anyone tells you is that if you get hit or fall over, then curl up in a ball and stay down until someone taps you on the shoulder telling you it’s safe to get up.

As for the bulls, there’s a first pack of 6 bulls. These are the anrgy ones, who will fight that night. They’re followed by a herding bull which has a bell around its neck which tries to round up any bulls that turn around and go the wrong way. This bull is followed by a crazy Spaniard with a stick, which is used to whack the herding bull, and the runners if he feels like it. After this, there are another three bulls that come through to round up any angry bulls that the first herding bull didn’t get. These herding bulls are a lot smaller and more docile, but I can’t emphasise enough that they’re still bulls, and still a tad scary.

The track the bulls run is about 10 metres wide, and winds its way through the town. There is one spot called ‘dead man’s corner’ which is aptly named. It’s a 90 degree turn to the right on cobblestones, and by this point the bulls are going flat out and they slide into the wall behind it. There was an unbelievable escape by a guy on our run where the bull slammed into the wall right where he was but he managed to fit into a small gap where the fence joined the building and somehow escaped untouched. The run itself is about 800m long, and after the run the bulls and runners enter the bull fighting arena. Once here, the bulls go through to a pen, and they release a few smaller bulls which run around and terrorise the runners who are in the stadium. These younger bulls actually inflict more damage than the bigger ones because they can turn on a dime, but are still big enough to throw people around. Oh, and they’ve still got horns.

The only thing more dangerous than the bulls are the locals if you disrespect the bulls. I didn’t see it, but apparently an American guy (in American flag pants no less) grabbed one of the small bulls by the horns and flipped it over (while saying HOO HAH presumably). He was then dragged away by a crowd of locals and apparently wasn’t able to walk away after they’d finished with him.

So that’s the logistics of the run. As for what it was like being in there…

I lined up with a group of about 12 from our camp. We were a pretty dishevelled, tired, hungover and scared bunch, but there was definitely a sense of courage in numbers. Sure one of us would probably die, but that meant it was a 11/12 chance of surviving! After the cops made their cull of runners and we were free to move up through the course, I ended up going to a spot just before deadmans corner, on the inside of a sweeping left turn. Being on the inside turned out to be a masterstroke.  The first firework went off, meaning that the bull pen is open, and then a second one to signal that all the bulls had left the pen. At this point it’s tradition that one of the locals who’s run a few times before sprints through screaming ‘TORRO TORRO TORRO’ and quite a few people fall for this and start running with fear etched across their faces, to the mirth of the crowd. But a few seconds later the panic that sweeps through is very very real.

I’ll never forget that feeling. I’ve never been somewhere where the sense of panic spreads so strongly from person to person like a wave. My heart was already going before this, but the feel of that wave of panic, and the sound of the bulls just made it explode. But oddly, while I was nervous and excited, I actually wasn’t that phased, I was more nervous because I had no idea was to come, than about any tangible thing. That changed when the first bull came around the corner. This bull turned out to be the star of San Fermin this year, as he broke free of the pack and went on his own vendetta against human kind, also setting the fastest time for the run (another thing for the punters to bet on). The moment I went from nervous anticipation to outright ‘SWEET MOTHERFUCKING JESUS CHRIST WHAT THE FUCK AM I DOING HERE!’ was when this 560 kg bull flew around the corner and barreled through about 8 people. Funnily enough I only know it was that many after watching my video of it (which tragically isn’t great as I had the camera tilted too far back…next time). At the time all I remember was the bull getting one guy square between horns and the guy flying back then getting trampled. From that moment on it was incredible. The rest of the pack flew around the corner, and a couple of them tripped over and skidded along the ground about a metre in front of me.  You could feel the sheer force of the bulls and just how heavy they were by the way the cobblestones vibrated. Getting bucked, or gored was definitely a scary proposition, but being under a bull when it slipped was just guaranteed death. Then as the herding bull came through we all started running as fast as we could, before getting stopped at the gate at dead mans corner (they do this to stop the bulls tracking back through the course too far). After a minute the gate was opened and we started running again, the whole time looking over our shoulders for the next three bulls. They passed me just outside the stadium. Unfortunately being held up at dead mans corner on the wrong side of the gate cost me, and I made it to the stadium doors just as they were closing. The throng of runners at the gate tried to push against it and force their way in, but despite a few sneaking in, the police had their batons out and were dishing out a bit of Pamplona justice to anyone still trying to get in…or anyone just standing there really (why should the tourists have all the fun). And just like that, after about 3 minutes during which I aged three years, it was over.

 I crashed so hard about 5 minutes after this. It felt like I had been awake for 3 weeks, then sculled 10 cans of red bull and that the last ounce of caffeine had just left my body. I met up with everyone back at the camp. Most of them had made it into the arena, and it seemed we’d all escaped. That was until one of the kiwi blokes came back to camp later that afternoon with a finger wrapped in gauze and a massive bruise on his back. Here’s what happened to him:

That photo (which was front page of the local paper) was taken at the entrance to the arena, where it bottle necks. The people running in all pile through as their consideration for any other human is outweighed by the knowledge that  a massive bull is on it’s way behind them. These guys got stuck in that bottleneck and then pushed over, and while the people behind them couldn’t get through, the bull had no such problem. The kiwi lad ended up getting 7 stitches and a seriously bruised rib or two, but for that photo….totally worth it!

One of the funniest things about the run is seeing the varying degrees of how people act. I saw people tug on the bulls horn to pull it away from someone trapped on the ground, and people put themselves right in the path of a bull to drag a complete stranger to safety. I also saw grown men push 18 year old girls into the path of a bull, just so they could be three metres away from the bull instead of two and a half. As for my own nature, I’m not really sure. I think the thing I was most concerned about was hiding my camera from the policia in case they kicked me out. Not sure what that says about my character except that I’m a bit of a consumer whore with extremely messed up priorities.