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Published: September 11th 2009
We were so excited to arrive in Spain...we touched down in Madrid airport and headed straight to the bus station to head to Pamplona for the San Fermin Festival and to join up with the Ground Crew. Our real excitment was seeing Nicole and Caitlan from our old flat in London. We arrived at about 10pm and Chrissy (our boss) picked us up from the bus station and took us to the campsite, El Melino which was about 40 minutes away. The bus carrying all the people from London inc Nic and Caitlan hadn't arrived due to some breakdowns etc, so we had to wait just a little bit longer to see the girls.
Ok now I am going to stop, I couldn't possibly go into all the details of our time at Pamplona, mainly because I cant remember them all, but also because I don't want you all to lose respect for me!! haha. So I will try and give you an over view skipping some details.
San Fermin Festival was a crazy 2 weeks full of Sangria, Sam Miguel (beer), vodka and calimouchos (red wine and coke)!! As some of you know we went to San Fermin
Canada Day at Pamplona
He had CC gafffed to his hand, it couldn't be taken off until he had finished itto work for First Festival travel, our job descriptions were simple, organise the site for all the punters (people who pay unlike us). So we set up 500 tents, we would cook breakfast, lunch and dinner for all the Ground Crew, set up marquees, welcome all punters, prepare and cook breakfast for punters for a few days, the boys did security shifts and just general jobs. The work was easy, the hard part was waking up in the morning after drinking all day and night. And yes that pattern continued for 2 full weeks. Oh and the Ground crew was about 50 people, 85% kiwis, 10% Aussies and 5% Canadians.
We arrived at the campsite one week prior to the punters to get set up, it also meant we had the campsite pretty much to ourselves including the pool. We were set up into 4 teams and we played mini olympics for this whole week, pretty much every game involved drinking and even if it didn't well you still drank!! For example we played a touch rugby tournament and the players out of your team elected to play had to begin the game with a vessel skull. During the
game if your team lost, you would have to skull. So can you imagine trying to play a rugby game with all the liquid you just skulled!
We also celebrated Canada day for the 4 Canadians that were on the Ground Crew, they were actually told there was a drinking ban that day, but it was a trick of course and when they rocked up we surprised them with lots of Canadian gifts including Canadian club that was strapped to their hands and could not be removed until it was finished. This was at 8am!! Our boss then told us we weren't going to put up tents instead we headed to San Sebastian about 1 hour from Pamplona. Dean and I went two years ago and the weather was awful but this time was a beautiful Spain summer day and we all relaxed and chilled at the beach.
After putting up all the tents we celebrated in style and had a Toga night. We headed to a small bar in the village next to the campsite where we drank calimouchos, yummy red wine and coke concoction, try it before you say yuk people its actually not that bad!
We basically arrived at the bar all dressed in our white sheets or pillow cases in some cases and well went nuts: people were doing the leap of faith, the kiwi boys were doing the haka, people were getting a little nude, the floor was submerged by 2 cm of alcohol so it was like a slippery slide at times. The poor locals that were actually there for a few relaxed drinks on a hot summers night were in for a real treat! It was the best night I had and when we got back to the campsite the party continued! It got even crazier......
When we didn't work or have games we lazed about in the Spanish sun, playing drinking games or trying to get some sleep that we clearly needed. When the punters arrived we had to share the campsite...bummer, but it did mean that the DJ's had arrived and the bar at the campsite was a live venue that went until the early morning. Plus the boys were excited I think the girl, guy ratio was 3:1!
The next monumental day was Opening Ceremony. The morning was really hectic, we had to feed the punters
first, then get changed into our white and reds and jump on the bus to the centre. The bus driver somehow took a wrong turn and ended up being 30 minutes late so by the time we arrived in Pamplona we were all running to make it to the centre before the cannons fired and officially opened the ceremony. I think we made it within a minute, so the cannons fired and we all popped our champagne all over each other, waved our San Fermin scarf in the air like the locals do and jump around madly singing "lets get f__king mental" and yes thats exactly what we did. The town square was already trashed, broken glass everywhere and thousands of tourists pouring Sangria all over there mates. When looking at pictures from the festival you can tell the difference between the tourist and the local: the tourist is covered in purple stains from Sangria and the tourist has no stains at all, they are perfectly clean. One of the ground crew members knelt down and well got a chunk of glass just under his knee, so he had to head off to get bandaged but rejoined the group only
30 minutes later to continue partying. Dean and I meet up with Dean's sister and boyfriend, Jenna and Nathan. They were far too clean so we poured Sangria onto their perfect whites! hehe. We all then headed to our next location some viewpoint next to a bar where we continued to drink, spit Sangria onto our mates and jump onto roof tops to get our photos taken (don't worry Gran the roof top was only 2ms high).
Our next destination was Boogie Street a renowned party street that was full of DJ's and a great place to party, it was also a great place to lose people, I lost Dean for about 15 minutes and we lost another girl for the rest of the day (she actually went back to the campsite but never told us). It was awesome, the people, the atmosphere, the music, everything. We went back to the campsite at about 4pm, Dean had his first security shift and well wasn't allowed to get to messed up. So the majority of us headed back to the campsite and continued on drinking.
The next morning we were both really hung over and had to get up
at 5am to go to the bull run. Yes Dean ran with the bulls and I met up with Jenna and Nathan and watched from the arena. It was great, but we were both so tired that we crashed as soon as we were allowed too. Dean was with a bunch of groud crew and in typical male macho ness they played chicken, they all put there hands into a circle and the first person to break away had to skull 1L of Sangria, Dean said you could hear the bulls coming and I think he was about the 3rd last to run out of 8 guys. He also said it was pretty easy, you run and then move to the side to let them go past and then you continue running next to them or behind them.
The rest of the time at the festival we did our general jobs, some how the juice concoctions we made really good we got promoted to 'Juice Bitches'. So we made juice every day for the punters. It was cool seeing all the injuries from the morning run or from their drunken night before hand and as you can imagine juice
was their lifesaver. I guess all my cocktail making skills finally came in handy!! haha
But all good things must come to an end and in true Pamplona style we all had a massive last night. Some of the boys and Chrissy created a very potent punch, but super yummy and we had a Kangaroo court session. The rules basically anyone who did something stupid, funny or outrageous was reported to one person the whole two weeks we were there. So every individual was called up to court and were told of their crime, they could plead guilty and have to skull until the Judges said stop or they could plead not guilty and had the chance to plead their case and call witnesses. All things were revealed at Kangaroo court not even our boss was safe and had to drink. It was a great night and a great way to end out working time in Pamplona.
The next day we spent packing up our stuff, the campsite and our usual laying around. We took the bus to the bus station and said our goodbyes to everyone. Our next mission was to organize bus tickets to Barcelona, but
the only bus leaving was at 1am the next day (which we kinda knew that would happen). There was another couple from the campsite who were going to Barcelona too so we all jumped in a cab to see how much the trains would be, well they were 3 times more, so we went back to the bus station and got our tickets for 1am. We had 8 hours to fill, so we booked accommodation for Barcelona, got a bite to eat and wandered around the town. At 10pm they had another fireworks show so we got out our sleeping bags and watched them again and pretty much fell asleep, we were so tired. We then moved into the station for the last hour before we left, but the bus station closes at midnight and we were ushered into a bus garage with only a concrete floor to sit on. So we waited....1am came, so did 2am, then 3am, we were getting worried and finally we were told the bus was running a little late! Hmm you think. Finally at 4:30am the bus arrived and we all piled on and went straight to sleep, me of course still struggled with
sleeping on public transport....does anyone have any tips for me?
We arrived in Barcelona about 10am and headed to our hotel which was 45 minutes out of the city and when we finally got there we showered and slept. Ahhh. The hotel was far from Barcelona but it was a massive room , with a beautiful shower and bath and TV. It felt like pure luxyury!! That day we did really nothing as we really needed to recoup from all that partying, I needed to buy an adapter so did a bit of shopping, the area that we were in was great they had a band playing in the Piazza and the locals were all out strolling around.
The net day we checked out and headed to the Beach where we spent most of our day swimming, sunbathing and relaxing. Later that night we met with Natalia, an ex flat mate from London. She kindly let us stay in her apartment for the next few days. She was also on holidays so we had our own private tour guide to take us around Barcelona. She took us everywhere she showed us the Gothic region, the city centre, the
Gaudi buildings, the markets, the pier, everywhere. It was fantastic! That night we made her dinner and drank calimouchos. We also hoped to have convinced her to move to either Australia or New Zealand.
The next day we went to the beach again and did our usual routine....nothing! We cooked Nat dinner again and had a few drinks. Her Columbian friend that she met in London was flying in that night for a festival so we all went out for a few drinks at her local bar and in the street, yes random people walk around and sell you cans of beer in the street, how lazy is that.
The next morning we were up early and said our goodbyes to Nat 😞 and headed to Valencia. We arrived in Valencia, checked into out hostel and once again went straight to the beach. That night we didn't get up to much. The next day we visited the infamous City of arts, Palau de les Arts (Valencias Opera House), the science museum and all other amazing constructions around the area. It was a photographic dream, absolutely amazing architecture! I have never seen anything like it. After all that walking
we needed a rest and headed straight to the each again!
For those of you who haven't been to Spain beaches let me tell you that you can see pretty much anything, most women are topless! They swim topless, play sports topless and obviously sunbathe topless. Its not only young women too, you would see all ages from babies to women over 70, they love getting that all over tan. We saw a couple of nutters too, one man in a less crowded part of the beacj was going for a little swim, what's unusual about that, well that fact that he was a man of 50, with a beer gut, a bad spot and was wearing a bright purple women's bikini!! Dean and I had to readjust our eyesight. Another time we were strolling on the beach a man of about 60 was completely nude but had a tattoo covering his you know what's, it was like a short tattoo, like they have T-shirt tattoos.
The next day I did a walking tour of Valencia, it was so hot that day that Dean decided to skip the tour and head to the beach, so being the nerd
I am, I did the tour and loved it!! Valencia has amazing architecture and so much wonderful history, but I wont bore you with all those details. I will just tell you go there, 10 months out of 12 its sunny so for all those English desperate for a summer, you are bound to get it here. Oh yer I still went to the beach that afternoon. What a beach bum!!
That night we flew to London and when we stepped off the plane in our sandals, shorts and sing-lets we knew we were home (our second home that is). It was freezing cold and raining, the second time it had rained since we left London in April. Ahh London we had 4 days to sort out tax, catch up with mates and say goodbye to our second home! Plus go to the Pamplona Ground Crew reunion party for another night of drinking and ruckus behavior!! Good times.
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