Tomatina

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Hey all, hope things are good in your parts of the world.

Been a long time - has been going kinda like this: Work-sleep-work-beer-sleep-beer-beer. Apart from a healthy social life and being broke (possibly related) we haven’t had much to say… until Tomatina!


We have a mate Adam who was travelling through Spain at the end of August, and was pushing for a Tomatina appearance from us. Since London has had the worst summer on record, and the eastern coast of Spain was hovering around 32 degrees - we figured we’d oblige. We overcame part of the broke thing with some frugal flights (London > Alicante > Valencia > Madrid > London)…

Alicante was beautiful, it has a sweet (by European standards) beach, nothing but clear blue skies and stinkin hot weather. Was so good to get back into the water. Completely understand why Brits are so sun/beach obsessed. From Alicante we beach-hopped our way north to Denia via trams that ran along the coast. Ate some AWESOME paella in Denia, and sweated some more. My Spanish is coming along beautifully too - I can order up to 4 beers now!



Anyway - turns out our mate Adam thought he’d challenge medical science with a second bout of chicken pox - so he stayed on one side of town (with his hire-car) and we the other. So now without a car we made some alterations to getting to Tomatina in Buňol (about 2.5 hrs north of Denia), we jumped on a bus at 7am and got to Valencia by 9am. Missed our connection bus onto Buňol by 9.15am. Swore till about 9.20am. Met some Californian kids who’d just done the same and jumped in a taxi by… geeze I wasn’t actually keeping a time log - but we shared a cab to Buňol.



We arrived at a dusty and not very pretty town - and just followed the crowds. Eventually we walked into the older much nicer part of the town, where the streets narrowed - balconies were full of locals throwing buckets of water onto the heaving crowd below. Now I’ve been in my fair share of packed crowds at festivals and stuff, but this was something else. No crowd control, no officials anywhere, basically just 40,000 people trying to squeeze into a few alleys - you get the idea. Awesome atmosphere though - lots of cheering, chanting, and drinking. They somehow got 4 or 5 massive trucks through this crowd - dumping tomatoes as they went. Think I only got my hands on one full-ripe-pristine tomatoe, and out of generosity/kindness/benevolence I gave it to the chick… who in turn pelted it right back at me… I must’ve been a bit of a target with my head sitting above most of the crowd - remember this one particularly well thrown tomatoe heading my way from across the crowd - I dodged it just in time - and it clocked some guy standing behind me right in the face. It was a great shot.



The show lasted an hour or so, before the second canon sounded and everyone packed up and left. Unfortunately the £2 t-shirt I brought especially for ripping remained pretty intact, but the tomatoe goggles came in handy (particularly for the occasional flying-flip-flop). The crowds are getting so big I’d guess a few thousand didn’t even get close enough to see a tomatoe! Would go again - but would make sure I got there early enough to get right amongst it.



Anyway hope you all enjoy the pics - and will have a Berliner story coming VERY soon. (and sorry for some of you I hadn't added on the list till now!)

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Photos

Alicante_beach
Beach in Alicante

denia
Chick in streets of denia (don't understand why building have 'stuff' hanging between them... they just do)

tomatina_1
Pushing our way through the crowds

tomatina_2
carro del tomate

tomatina_3
Napisan challenge

tomatina_4
After tomatina