El Encierro

I made my way to the train station around midday on Saturday. The train ride was about 6 hours to Pamplona, and fortunately the seats were a bit more comfortable than the flat, unpadded shockers I had from Toulouse to Barcelona.

Unfortunately the air conditioning in my cabin wasn´t working, and a couple of hours into the trip, the Spanish sun started to make the place unbearingly hot and uncomfortable. Being in allocated seating, I wasn´t too confident in the option of moving seats, but talking to the American chick next to me, she informed me that the cabin she was supposed to be in (she was in mine so as to sit with her friends) had a few free seats and was of a temperature that involved people wearing jackets. Jumping at this opportunity, I scurried into the next cabin and found plenty of empty seats. An American guy from my cabin that I´d been talking to joined me, and we both tried to get some more sleep, fully aware of the long hours we´d be pulling after we got off the train.

This lasted for a while, but about an hour out of Pamplona, the train stopped at a station and decided to take a 20 minute siesta so that those who were in the cabins without air conditioning could take a break. I questioned the usefulness of this, as the heat outside was just as unbearable as that in the cabin, and all it resulted in was us being a further 20 minutes later, on top of the extra hour we were late because the Spanish trains seem to travel a lot slower than their timetable dictates.

Reboarding the train after this breif hiatus, a different American guy with a very thick Brooklyn accent informed me I was in his seat, and rather than return to my stifling cabin, I chose to stand in the air conditioned one for the remainder of the journey. I got to know the group of Americans that were travelling together, which would turn out aiding me quite significantly later on that weekend. Eventually our train trundled into Pamplona, which sparked several cheers and chants from all those in the cabin.

After leaving the station and heading towards the Old Town proper, where most of the action was to occur, I quickly realised that my attire was grossly unprepared for the event. I was walking around in a blue polo and black shorts, whereas 90% of everyone else was in traditional San Fermin garb, which usually consists of a white shirt, with white pants or shorts, a red neckerchief and red waist sash. I understood I would need to appropriate these items, and was hoping I could do this at the event. I wandered around for about 45 minutes, seeing thousands of revelers drinking and partying (this was at about 9PM, and the party was even at this point pretty crazy and intense), but somehow I managed to miss any place selling these items. I eventually happened upon something resembling a newsagent which sold the neckercheif and waist sash, and some touristy white shirts with logos all over them. I found the plainest white shirt I could, threw it on and headed back out the party. It was only at this point that I managed to locate the hundreds of market stalls that were selling this stuff in every which way shape or form, and ended up buying another touristy shirt which was more plain, and some white pants, and then another plain white shirt to finally get the exact outfit I was after. I should point out that all this still only cost me about 25 euros, so it wasn´t exactly bank breaking stuff.

I continued in the touristy shirt with my jeans, neckercheif and sash, deciding that I´d put on the plain white shirt and white 3/4 shorts (which I would later be informed by some American girls were known as "mens capris"), when I actually got around to doing the Encierro. Having all my artifacts in place, I turned to the party and exploring the town.

The place wasn´t too big, but the winding streets made it quite easy to get lost. I was mostly trying to walk the bull run course, so I knew exactly where I would be running, on what surface, and about how far the whole course was (about 850 meters all up), but this effort seemed doomed to circumvention every time I attempted it. The first time I tried to walk the course I got lost, and ended up in some other part of the old town. It was dark by this point, and I found a Spanish rock band playing in the street which were excellent. They mostly played covers of rock songs by bands like The Doors, Arctic Monkeys, U2, etc, but also played some Spanish rock stuff as well which was nice to hear. I ran into a Spanish guy who was drinking some weird orange Fanta and alcohol concoction, but as I´d resigned myself to staying fairly light on the booze that night, I didn´t partake of more than a sip. It was about 11PM by this point and the whole city was in super party mode. It was an incrible vibe, as people everywhere were having an awesome time, the music was good, and probably one of the best parts was that everyone was in the same uniform. The white shirt and red neckercheif/sash combination was on about 95% of people by this stage, and the feeling of unity was palpable. More than a few times I just felt an intense rush of positive energy just by walking around, sharing in the huge grins of everyone in the city.

I should point out at this point that the old town itself was not all peaches and cream. Whilst the party was incredible, and the vibe amazing, the state of the city grew progressively more and more rank as the night wore on. Garbage was strewn -everywhere-. I saw few bins around the place, and even in there had been more, they would have filled so quickly to be completely useless before the sun went down anyway. Everyone just threw their crap in the street, and whilst there were a few WC´s (toilets) around the place, nothing would prepare you for the rivers of piss flowing down the street. Imagine many tens of thousands of people all drinking and partying throughout a fairly small and dense old style city and the amount of urine this tends to generate. Toilets were simply not on people´s minds, and the smell of the stuff permeated every street and avenue, the only relief from which usually came from finding a large open square, as the gents usually, and I will repeat, only usually prefer a wall to handle their business rather than open air. Clearly with this many partiers there will be several that go too hard too early, and by the early hours of the morning, most streets started to become littered with passed out bodies as well as general garbage. All I can suggest to these poor souls is that they burn their clothes and get some form of sterlising shower as soon as possible.

After seeing the band and continuing my wandering, I decided to try and walk the bull run path again, and reaching about the halfway point, ran into another Spanish guy who started up an interesting conversation. We talked about the running of the bulls, and he tried desperately to convince me to reconsider my intent of participating, citing the wet streets (it had rained a little earlier, but most of the moisture was due to spilt drinks, etc). I wasn´t surprised to hear this, as I´d heard of other people talking to Spaniards, enquiring if they were participating in the run, only to be told "Are you kidding? Only idiot tourists actually run with the bulls!". After a few minutes discussion of this, some of his friends came over and took me and themselves to another bar in the town that was so packed you couldn´t even walk in. At this point I might describe what people were drinking. There were several stores selling liquor by the bottle, and rum seemed a popular choice to a lot of people, huge plastic cups of beer (probably half liters) were being held by nearly everyone, and if it wasn´t beer inside then it was generally either Sangria, or more commonly, a local concoction known as Kalimotxo. This is basically a 50 50 mix of red wine and coke, something which I decided was not in my best interest to try. Also, nearly all of the bar floors were coated in sawdust in order to soak up the incredible amounts of spilt booze. This was easily apparent, as everyone who left one of these bars would do so either with several blotches of Kalimotxo stains on their white shirts, or completely drenched by the stuff.

I chatted to my new Spanish friend outside the bar for a while (it was far too crowded to move inside, and I didn´t feel like a Kalimotxo shower), and departed to try, once again, to walk the bull run. I found the starting point once more, and talked to some very drunk Spaniards with poor English about the run and any advice they might have for me. All that ended up happening was a lot of joking around, which was actually hilarious. One guy was trying to convince me that he spoke perfect English, while the others were indicating that he was very drunk and had an extremely small penis. We all had a laugh and they took a photo of me with them (with their camera, I didn´t really dare give them mine considering their state) and I finally managed to walk the rest of the bull run. I sat down on a park bench at one point to ponder my map, and a girl came running up to me jibbering something in a dialect I didn´t understand (which would be anything other than English). I informed her I only spoke the British born dialect, and she had a quick think and said "Oh, Hi! Look, one of my friends really wants to meet you!". I got a bit excited at this point, and thought there could be some very interesting events on the horizon coming my way. She quickly followed this up with "So yes... do you like boys?". The little Spanish fantasy that I had been running through my head quickly dissapeared in a shower of realization, and I replied with "Uhh... No!". She thanked me for my time and quickly scurried off. To say I went through a wide range of emotions in the space of about 20 seconds would be something of an understatement.

I ended up walking the whole bull run, and my mission accomplished, and the clock hitting about 3AM, I decided it was time to find a piece of quiet park space to have a short nap. Somehow some people managed to sleep in the old city itself, but with the incredible ruckus that was going on around them, they were either completely deaf, or completly drunk. I walked about a kilometer out of the city to a nice quiet park devoid of people, stuffed my bag with the extra t-shirts and tried to get some shut-eye. Unfortunately lying down in a cold park isn´t very conducive to sleep even without a massive party bustling around you, and the most I got was two hours of gentle dosing. My phone informed me it was 5AM and time to get up and get myself organised for the primary reason I´d come to Pamplona. I put on my clean white shirt, my white 3/4 shorts, re-tied my red sash and neckercheif and headed back to the old town. I found the plaza that had a luggage check in, and checked in my small backpack (I´d left the big one in the train station at Barcelona). I found my way to the bull run path, and found two other Australian guys who were preparing themselves for the even as well.

We chatted about stuff in general, and slowly the path became more and more compressed with people. Despite the claims earlier, the group was primarily made up of Spaniards, Americans and Australians. I would argue that some of the Australians were the most nationalistic, with aussie flag stubbie holders around wrists and flags around necks being prominent in a few places. As we waiting, there were a few Spaniards reading the morning´s newspaper which detailed the results of the previous day´s (Saturday) run. It was very interesting and confidence boosting to see what kind of information they documented. It started with a description of how long the bulls took to run the course, followed by the injury report. According to this very informative paper, which used graphs and charts to transcend language, there were 104 first aid calls during the days run. It detailed at exactly which points along the run these calls were made, and then gave a pie chart of types of injuries inflicted. It is probably known to a lot of my Australian readers that two of our countrymen were injured on this particular day, including one guy getting gored through the butt / thigh area. This paper showed in graphic detail how this occured, and then we pondered the pie graph showing what kind of injuries we were likely to receive if we were hit by the bulls.

The following page then showed the six bulls that were running today, on our run, and the class of bull it was. Being a Spanish word, I had no idea what it meant, however a Spaniard looking over our shoulder quickly informed us: "Oh, yeah they´re the biggest class!". The smallest bull we were running with weighed in at 650KG, the others being very close to 700KG, with one breaching that mark.

Needless to say, the progressing minutes got more and more intense, with the crowd really starting to get into it, various chants of various languages went up, and us three Australians looked at each other a little nervously and we mentally steeled ourselves for the ordeal ahead. Tightening our shoes, and then following suit with the rest of the Spaniards and rolling up a few pages of newspaper which were supposed to be used to whack the bulls as they run past, we got ready for the start of the run. I started at about 300 meters from the start of the course, basically at the top of the first hill. From here, the course kinked left for about 50 meters and then had a sharp right turn for the final stretch to the arena. The place was absolutely packed with wall to wall people, and I had no understanding of it was possible for anyone to move, let alone 6 massive bulls to go charging through the group. At about 7:55, however, the crowd started to move a little and people spread throughout the length of the course. I moved another 50 meters or so up the course, and then before I knew it the first gun sounded.

The crowd of runners roared, and people started lightly jogging up the course. Some more brave souls stayed on the sides of the roads, firmly holding their ground. The first gunshot only indicates that the bulls are being prepared for release, and that they´ll be on their way shortly. About 20 seconds after this, the second gunshot fired to indicate that the bulls had been released. At this noise, the noise level tripled, and the crowd surged forward with an indescribable urgency. Everyone ran as hard as they could, and turning the final corner, unto the last 400 meter stretch, I was running like I never have, constantly flicking my head back to see what if there was a rather annoyed looking male bovine behind me. Everyone else was doing pretty much the same thing, and the problem this invokes is that many people slip over on the slimy cobbled surface. Dodging these unfortunate souls, and maintaining my own uprightness, I continued to surge up the street, and about 100 meters up the stretch, the clamoring of hoofs and the roar of people gradually built up in crescendo until suddenly I was forced, nearly unwittingly, to the right side of the road. At this point I might describe that this final strech of path was about 8 or 9 meters across, including about 1 meter either side of curb.

Suddenly the bulls, packed in a tight group came roaring past, and luckily by this point everyone had managed to get to the wall, at least 5 people thick managing to squeeze into less than a meter of space. The massive animals thundered past not more than 2 meters away from me, and knowning that the worst danger was now in front of us and moving away, the crowd roared and started charging after the bulls. The bulls run at about 20K´s an hour, and understandbly no human runner could get close. So we charged in their wake and got another few hundred meters up the course, when the steer came up behind us. A few people thinking it was another rampaging bull freaked out and charged to the side. The steer is brought up behind the bulls to ensure that they keep moving forward and don´t get distracted and start charging people, but being a neutered animal with a cowbell around its neck, it is a fairly placid creature, and whilst I wasn´t able to give one of the bulls a whack with my paper baton, I was able to give the steer a good couple of smacks on the rump.

A minute or so later, completely out of breath I made it to the final corridor into the arena, and thinking that my adrenaline was all worn out, I got closer to the entrace gates. Even as I type this I can feel an incredibly chill through my whole body, as walking through the doors to the bull arena is definitely the biggest rush I´ve had in my entire life. Ten thousand or so people in the spectator stands are all cheering at the top of their lungs, and walking through those huge doors into the arena at the centre of their discourse makes you feel like the absolute king of the world. I felt it start a few meters before stepping through the door and yelled "Yeah... Yeah... YEEEAAAAAHHHHH" in the biggest braveheart style scream you could imagine and ran around with a couple hundred other people that hand managed to make it that far before they closed the arena gates. The rampaging bulls had been ushered back into a safe area, and those left in the arena were left high fiving and cheering each other on. The look on everyone´s face, regardless of nationality spoke exactly the same words that were "Yes, we made it, and we´re OK!".

This revelry lasted for about 10 or so minutes, and I can garauntee you, dear reader, that the chills and excitement didn´t subside for this entire period. However, at the end of this time, it was time for the next round of activities as a younger bull, probably about half the size of the big bulls was let out into the arena to frolic with the runners. This bull had its horns taped up with cork to remove the dangerous sharpness of a natural horn, but bursting through the gate he picked up at least one revelrer, and carried him halfway across the arena before flicking him into the air. The young bull then ran around through the crown, and all of the runners now left in the arena ran from side to side trying to avoid his charge. This wasn´t too difficult, as if you saw the bull running directly toward you and you weren´t one of the more braver souls bent on becoming the next champion matador, you would run at a right angle to his path. Assuming you hadn´t made direct eye contact with him and he´d fixated on this new challenge, you could run at a right angle to his path and would generally remain unscathed. That said, even those who copped a full on charge by the young bovine and were flicked up into the air, got up a few seconds later, seemlingly unhurt. The main trick was, if you were struck by the bull, you simply stay in the fetal position on the ground. If you begin to get up whilst the creature is still warily eyeing you, he will charge again until you stay down for the count.

The crowd in the arena, at least ten thousand strong, cheered and roared in accordance with what was going on. If the bull struck someone, flicked them into the air or carried them for some distance along the arena, the crowd would respond with a loud "Oooohhh", and if someone managed to jump the bull whilst he was standing still, the crowd would give a loud cheer of appreciation. What the crowd didn´t appreciate was ganging up on the bull. Occasionally the bull would stop to take account of his situation, and some of the runners would whack him with their batons, or several would grab him at once, much to the dissaproving whoots and whistles by the crowd who felt it unfair. Probably the best hit I saw was when the bull charged a group of runnings lingering near the fence, and threw no less than 6 or 7 directly over it into the air gap between the fence and the crowd.

Personally I was content in simply dodging the angry bovine, letting the more adventurous do the whacking and the jumping. After 5 to 10 minutes the young bull would get tired, and the herders would send out the fully grown, cowbell wearing steer who would settle the young bull immediately and guide him back out of the ring. A fresh young bull would then be sent out, and this cycle repeated itself 5 or 6 times. After this, the whole show was ended, about 10AM, and the crowd left the arena, and the runners left the stage.

The incredible buzz stayed with me for the rest of the day, and after gathering my wits, I found my way to the baggage reclaim to get my things. The line was about an hour long, and I met up with some of the Americans I´d talked to on the train. It was within this group that I met a 3 very cool American girls who´d been studying Spanish in Grenada: Jeanine, Aleen and Chelsea. After some chatting in the line, and a lot of waiting, we eventually recovered our belongings. The girls organised their bus tickets out of Pamplona, and we then grabbed some food and spent the rest of the day in a park away from the ruckus of the old town. Within this park there was some kind of lumberjack olympics going on, with wood chopping competitions and the like, but we were content to sit on the grass and catch up on some missed sleep from the previous 24 hours. I learned that Jeanine was heading to Barcelona herself for a couple days, and I gauranteed that I would meet up with her the next day and show her some sights. After handing her my Barcelona map as collateral for meeting up, I hung out with them for the remainder of the day until my train arrived, at which point I bid my farewell and headed back to Barcelona.

The whole weekend was probably one of the most incredible experiences I´ve ever had in my life, and I doubt that I´ll ever see as big a party as I did in Pamplona that weekend. The vibe of the place was unbelievable and the rush I got from successfully completing the run, and then challenging the bulls in the arena is second to none. I cannot describe how happy I am to be able to say that I partied in the Festival of San Fermin, participated in the Encierro (Running of the Bulls) and came away unscathed with such an awesome story.