La Tomatina - World's Largest Tomato Fight!

This has got to be THE craziest thing I have ever experienced.

Early in the morning, a huge pole, with a piece of ham attached at the top, is coated with pig grease and watered down to make it more slippery. Everyone clambers on top of each other trying to reach the piece of ham, and when the first person grabs it, truckloads of tomatoes are released into the streets. No one was able to get it so at 11 am, the alarm sounds and the tomatoes are still released from the trucks.

As we tried to make our way to the centre of the tomato fight, we were getting totally squished in the crowd. At certain points, I honestly couldn't breathe and started coughing - it was pretty scary. I kept thinking to myself, " Don't fall Lisa, you're going to get trampled". It got even worse as the trucks were trying to make their way out of the crowd and everyone just flattened themselves against the wall. I had to keep running back up to avoid getting killed because the crowds were so dense on both sides with people.

The streets were absolutely disgusting! There was a river of red flowing down the streets, with discarded clothes and shoes everywhere! We weren't even throwing tomatoes anymore; instead, everyone was throwing tomato juice soaked clothes at each other. I had a bloody shoe thrown at me too!! These Spanish guys were trying to rip our t-shirts off because we were still clothed, but we managed to get away.

At one point, I managed to lose one of my flip flops in the river of red but I was so determined to find it that I started shoving people out of the way. Miraculously, I was able to find it among the sea of shoes.

After, when we decided we had enough, we started making the trek back to the train. To clean off, we were getting hosed/water dumped on us from locals living in the apartments above. I discovered tomato bits in places where food should NEVER be! It was super hard to get it out of my hair and my clothes were pretty much stained so I threw them away. Also, the train staff won't let you on the train if you were too dirty, or for the guys, if you were shirtless. So in the train line up, there were so many guys wearing girl's t-shirts/tanks that were way too small for them, in order to get on the train.

+ more pics if Anne's sketchy one-year expired waterproof cam develops