survival guide
should you decide to attend the tomato-flinging festival known as la tomatina, please consider the following step-by-step guide to success:
1. obtain a car. hope that it's the size that will fit the other 4 people going, and their luggage... i.e. hope it's not european.
2. drive to valencia. realize that you don't have hotel reservations and spend the next few hours calling places and walking around. realize that 30,000 of the 40,000 other people expected to attend have actually done the same thing.
3. find a hotel and get a room for 2 people. sneak in the remaining 5 people by working out an elaborate coupling system (oh yeah, pick up a 6'2" irish man).
4. catch the festival bus at the bus station. figure out that you’ve somehow insulted the guy at the station, and he's put you on the city bus rather than the 30-minute straight shot. spend the next 1-1/2 hours touring the little-seen towns near valencia.
5. have the civil guard pull your bus over, and realize that, in the interest of safety, you have brought nothing but bus fare home, and your passport is safely locked in the contraband hotel.
6. pay off police, continue on your way.
7. arrive at tomato site and follow the crowd. hear the first drum indicating start, and get absorbed in to the throngs of people. immediately lose half your party, and your shoe.
8. halfway through, having safely (thus far) not gotten trampled, run over by the tomato trucks, or otherwise squashed, get picked up and thrown by a very drunk guy. start to panic as your feet cannot touch the ground, receive an unripe tomato to the side of your neck, and an elbow cracked across your face. decide to get out of the crowd for a while. find your shoe on the way.
9. find shelter in a nearby garage to wait out the storm. realize everyone else is doing that too, except the fools soaking their shirts in the watery tomato goo, and flinging them.
10. hear the second drum and hope chaos is finished. it's not. make a break for it anyway with 2 new girlfriends.
11. have no less than 3 hats full of tomato sludge dumped on your head. third hat has the bonus of the idiota grabbing your breast first. punch him in the face. lose both shoes.
12. lose new friends after taking a picture with them, and find new friend. take picture. lose new friend.
13. shower yourself off at the various opportunities provided by the locals wielding hoses. realize they have targeted you to clean and that those hats full of tomato junk must have been full of other junk too.
14. go on a shoe scavenger hunt. start to barter with other people wearing mismatched shoes to try and find a pair that will fit. find your irish man (now also shoe-less) in the process, and include him in the hunt.
15. head towards bus stop and hope other friends have the same idea. find 4 of them, the fifth standing on TOP of the bus stop shelter. assess the damage, and find out that other friends managed to escape The Crush and find a nirvana-like place where people helped, rather than shoved, other people. try not to be jealous.
16. wait for bus. when it arrives, have 3 portuguese girls cut in front of you. watch as 3 of your friends drive away on the now-full bus. realize the only 2 people who spoke spanish were on that bus.
17. try various other means of transportation, and realize bus is best option. wait for 2.5 hours, watching 2 buses go by that won’t stop. realize your español improves in dire straights, and manage to negotiate watch out points with the city cleaning crew. also manage to tell off 4 men in various languages when asked the "are they real" question.
18. throw yourself in to the path of oncoming bus. get yourselves on and head back to valencia. find other friends lounging in hotel, already clean. realize entire room smells of tomato.
19. clean up and go out to eat authentic paella. get lost for 45 minutes on the way home (stupid tom-tom).
20. leave for granada next morning. realize hotel staff has caught on to the 6 people living in your hotel room, and start trailing your friends across valencia. somehow manage to all grow excellent espionage skills and shake the hotel mafia. hope that they haven't called ahead to the next town, just in case.
i hope this little guide helps next time you put reason on a shelf and take your lives into the hands of drunk tomato-flingers. buena suerte!
current mood: we stink.