For those of you who just want to skip directly to the good part, here is the Running of the Nudes. Other items of interest include the First, Second, Third and Fourth Encierro (Running of the Bulls).
This travelogue describes the July 3-11, 2007 summer vacation for Jeff Cook, traveling from Los Angeles to Pamplona, Spain with my buddy Milan Sabata and his friend Bob Popelka. Milan, whom I have known since the early 90s and originates from the Czech Republic, has been coming to Pamplona for the Fiesta San Fermin and the Running of the Bulls for 6 years straight now. Milan rents a 2nd-floor suite of rooms with three beds and a balcony overlooking a street near the bull-run. The suite costs €1100 (Euros) per week, and the current exchange rate is .71 dollars per Euro, so it is about $1550 per week.
Earlier this year I took a hybrid online/oncampus refresher class at Santa Monica College – Spanish 1 with Profesora Maria Erickson (I took Spanish 1 & 2 in high school). The enthusiasm and energy of Profesora Erickson made the class fun to attend, and I relearned enough Spanish to get the gist of most Spanish conversations in Pamplona and to make myself understood at least part of the time.
During our trips we typically take hundreds of photos, of which only a fraction end up in a travelogue. Below are some of my favorites of the photos taken during this trip.
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PETA Activists from the Running of the Nudes |
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Chupinazo with Balloons |
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Crazy Aussie Fountain Jumper |
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First Run (Encierro), Bull Going Down |
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Paella Close-up, Crab on the Beach |
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Bulls during Fourth Run |
The trip from Los Angeles to Pamplona took almost a full day. We took a 12 hour flight on Lufthansa (1025A) from Los Angeles to Frankfurt, then had a 3+ hour layover, then a 2 hour Lufthansa flight (215P) from Frankfurt to Bilbao, after which we rented a car and then drove the 2+ hours southeast to Pamplona. The price of our round-trip tickets was $1366 each. In Pamplona, we drove around town looking for a parking space, then finally parked the car in a parking structure and walked to our suite in the old town. The elapsed time for the trip was almost 22 hours.
After we arrived at our suite and met the landlord with the keys, we got our bearings, went to the local Internet cafe to check email and make Skype calls, then we went out to eat Chinese food (!!) on Milan's recommendation. Your average food in Pamplona is not very good, with most local restaurant/bars essentially serving fried fast food, or the ubiquitous baguette sandwich with two or three pieces of prosciutto and a piece of cheese, and nothing else. The Chinese food was filling but just so-so.
Below is a photo of the streets of Pamplona before the start of the festivities (and before the streets are covered in trash and thronging with people).
We got up early (Milan woke me up at 6am, the bastard!) and waited for the Mercado Publico at the bottom of the street to open. We can see the market from our balcony. The market opened at 9am, and we stocked up on meats (ham and prosciutto), cheeses (three kinds), fresh bread, fruit (pears, cherries, apples, apricots), olive oil, garlic, shallots, onions, tomatoes, etc. For breakfast we made platters of this food and then we pigged out. ¡Muy delicioso! Two photos of the outside of the market are shown below. The second image is what we see looking out our balcony down to the bottom of the Calle de los Baños.
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Today is the start of the most exciting part of the festivities – the Running of the Nudes. PETA (People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals) protests the cruelty to the bulls the day before the festival opens, with PETA activists walking through the streets in skimpy clothing. If they wore lots of clothes, no one would pay attention to them! No actual nudes were present, but many risqué body parts, including plenty of buns and breasts and even a few testicles, were on view. I believe that the running of the bulls is not the particular cruelty they are protesting, since usually only humans get hurt during the run, but, afterward, the bulls end up in the arena and are killed by matadors for sport. If you think being impaled by swords and bled to death is cruelty, then you agree with PETA. But this tradition is hundreds of years old, and will probably remain a tradition for a long while to come. And the activities surrounding it are certainly lots of fun.
Below are 25 images covering the Running of the Nudes. When you place your mouse over a small image, a larger version of the image appears in the pane to the right. Clicking on a small image brings up the full-resolution photo. Jeff Cook, Milan Sabata and Bob Popelka took the photos below, in no particular order.
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Below is Milan's YouTube video of the front-line marchers in the Running of the Nudes.
For the PETA protest, the streets were crowded with people watching the spectacle, although not nearly as many who will watch the actual bull run. There are as many photographers (myself included) tracking the progress of the march as there are marchers. The march took about 2 hours from start to finish. The primary chant during the march was "Toros, Sí, Toreros, No" (Bulls, Yes, Bullfighters, No). At the end, many of the marchers, including the topless ones, willingly gave interviews to the press. If you look closely at the signs in the photos, you will see that many different nationalities are represented, including American/Australian/English, Italians, Croatians, Germans, and Spanish. Milan is the photographer on the left in the middle in the third to last photo.
Friday is the opening day of Festival San Fermin. We got up late (9am) and had another great breakfast of bread, ham, prosciutto, cheese, cucumber, spring onions, tomatoes, and olive oil, prepared for us by Bob, who now thinks the kitchen belongs to him and him alone. We are not complaining.
Almost everyone dresses up in a special dress for the festival, consisting of white pants and shirt (perhaps with a logo), a red scarf, and a long red sash called a "faja." Below is a photo of some young men in this attire, loitering in front of the barrier set up for the Running of the Bulls.
Below you see Bob and I posing in partial dress, standing behind some soaked revelers who are shamelessly urinating into a water fountain.
The festival begins with a speech by the mayor (Yolanda Barcina) of Pamplona, and opening is held in the Plaza Consistorial. Milan has been here many times before, but this was my first taste of how many people actually attend the festival. Since there are tens or even hundreds of thousands of people, all dressed similarly, just imagine a sea of bodies in red and white. A couple of photos taken by Milan at this plaza are shown below.
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Shown below is the Casa Consistorial, from which Milan took the photos above and from which the mayor gave her opening speech: "Pamploneses. Pamplonesas. ¡Viva San Fermin! ¡Gora San Fermin!"
Milan knows the ropes in these crowds, and was able to push through to get himself a spot on the steps of the Casa Consistorial. Even though I was less than 20 feet away, I never managed to get to where he was, and, after getting violently pushed around by the crowd a couple of times, I left the plaza for a less crowded place. Afterwards, Bob and I went shopping at the Mercado Publico, and bought half a baby pig to roast for dinner.
The streets and plazas were thronged with people, young and old, most drinking either beer, champagne, wine, or sangria (a mixture of wine and fruit juice). But not all of the alcohol was consumed, as much ended up on other people, because many were fizzing their champagne bottles to spray people, and dumping or throwing or squirting their drinks on passers-bye. In addition, some were throwing flour and mustard. And others were throwing water from the balconies to soak the revelers, sometimes at their insistence. It seemed to me that, for the majority of the people participating in the festivity, their clothes did not survive the night. The photo above with Bob and Jeff posing shows two of these characters, drenched in wine or sangria, and the first photo below is indicative of the drenching process. The second photo below shows some girls covered in mustard.
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After the opening ceremony, Milan told us to go to the statue/fountain on Calle de la Navarra, where people would be climbing up the statue and jumping off into the crowd. I only made it 2/3 of the way through the crowd, then just stopped to watch. The climb was difficult enough (poor handholds) that some did not make it, and much trust was involved in jumping off, as the people below had to commit to catching you. One jumper failed to land horizontally, jumping feet-first instead, so he was not caught, and he broke one or both of his ankles. Medics took him away in a stretcher. One crazy Aussie did a backflip and was caught successfully. Below are some photos taken by Milan of this event.
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Below is Milan's YouTube video composite of fountain jumpers.
For dinner, Bob roasted the young pig in the oven at low temperature for about 6 hours. Then he turned up the heat and crisped the skin. It was tender and delicious, but I think that Milan was less than thrilled about eating this meal, as he declined our offer to prepare the rest of the pig on Saturday (Bob only cooked the back half of our half-pig).
Later that evening (it stays light here until after 10pm), we took a walk and ended up at the outdoor food stalls set up especially for this festival, on the western edge of the old city. From these stalls they serve traditional country food, which consists of fried potatoes, onion rings, calamari; spit-roasted chickens; fours types of sausages for sandwiches; huge 3-foot-wide pans of paella, with clams, mussels, shrimp, langosta, crab and sausage; and various different types of churros (deep-fried Mexican pastries dipped in powdered sugar). Because we had to, we ate some sausages and some churros, and then we watched the evening fireworks display and then went home to bed.
Below is a photo of the two huge paellas, one cooking and one finished, along with a close-up of the finished paella.
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The first Running of the Bulls (called "Encierro" in Spanish) for this year was on Saturday morning, 7/7/07. Milan has a press pass, provided to him because of his work on the Chatsworth Chronicle in the San Fernando valley north of Los Angeles, and he got up early (4:30am) to claim his spot on the corner of Calle de los Mercaderes and Calle de La Estafeta in the middle of the run. The corners are best, because the bulls usually slip and slide on the cobblestones when running around the corner. This morning, Milan claimed the exact spot he wanted, to the chagrin of the next 30 journalists who showed up shortly after he arrived, who now recognize Milan as the Americano regular for this spot. Milan could not use the wireless remote for his camera because of some sort of local interference, so he got some cardboard from a local store to put down in the corner, so he wouldn't have to lie in the detritus left over from the previous night's partying. A photo of Milan's corner spot is shown below.
Bob and Jeff watched the run on TV, instead of attempting to get a good spot on the street by arriving four hours in advance at 4am. Even if we had arrived this early, the Spanish are aggressive and you have to fight to prevent others from getting in front of you and blocking your view. We may have to run with the bulls if we want to get a view from close up.
Even though the event is called the Running of the Bulls, not all of the cattle in the run are bulls – there are six bulls and six steers. The steers are used to keep the herd together and moving forward. If the run were left up to the bulls, they would just mill back and forth goring and killing people – typical male behavior. The steers can be distinguished from the bulls in that their coats are light and the bulls are usually dark, either black or brown.
The run was uneventful in that the bulls apparently hurt no one, but it was anomalous in that it started 5 minutes late and the streets were not clean. Because the city failed to clean the streets beforehand, the run was slick with wine, beer, dew, and urine, with the trash (beer, wine, and sangria bottles, whole and broken; paper goods; food; etc.) pushed to the sides. The amount of trash generated by hundreds of thousands of revelers partying all night is unbelievable, and everyone just discards their trash on the street. And, yes, the revelers were partying all night, and will apparently continue to do so day and night for the next 7 days.
During the first run, Milan took some excellent photos and a video from his spot on the corner, as shown below. The run of the bulls past Milan's spot took only a few seconds. The humans took a bit longer to pass by, as there were hundreds (or perhaps even a few thousand) of them, but there are only 12 bulls in the run (actually, 6 bulls and 6 steers). As you will see in the photos and the video below, a bull at the tail end of the herd slips and falls into Milan's corner. The bull hit and cracked the lens cover of Milan's Nikon D2-X, and upended the Sony Cybershot T10 that he was using to take the video. To play the photo sequence from start to finish, run the mouse over the first row from left to right, the second row from right to left, the third row from left to right, and then the fourth row from right to left. Click on each small photo for the corresponding high-resolution image.
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In the photo sequence above (which took less than 5 seconds), the first shot shows the tail of a steer followed by the runners, and in the second shot you see the first of the bulls. By the third shot, you can see the head of a runner who has been knocked down. This runner remains in the photo for the next four shots, while a steer passes by. The bull that slips and slides into the corner is visible in the last six shots, and is completely down on his chin and neck for the last shot, immediately after which he slammed into Milan's camera and broke the lens cover.
Below is Milan's YouTube video of the first Running of the Bulls.
Here is a stand-alone version of the photos and video for the First Running of the Bulls.
I worked on this travelogue almost all morning and afternoon, while Milan and Bob slept. In the evening, I made a visit to the automatic bank teller, as can be seen in the photo below. As mentioned previously, there is trash everywhere. The teller machine had cracked glass and the fact that it worked at all was a miracle.
Next we walked to a restaurant familiar to Milan that serves bull (toro) stew, but we arrived at 8pm and it did not open until 9:30pm. So we instead walked to the outdoor place that made the huge paella. The paella at the stand we picked still had 30 minutes left to cook, so we ate calamari, potatoes with red sauce and mayonnaise, and each of us had a roasted half-chicken with green chilies. The food was hearty and good. We got a waiter to take our photo before the meal, and this is the first photo that includes all three of us.
During the Festival San Fermin, there is a nightly event for children of all ages called the Toro de Fuego (Bull of Fire). During this event, a man carrying a cylinder on his head simulating the back of a bull and studded with fireworks, runs through the street as a living fireworks display. On Saturday night Milan took some photos of this event, shown below.
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The second running of the bulls was on Sunday morning. Milan stayed up all night, because he slept quite a bit on Saturday afternoon, and he arrived at his spot at 4:55am. The streets are still thronging with people at this time, people who have not yet slept and most of whom are waiting for the bulls to run. Just before Milan started setting up, one of the Aussie party-goers in a large crowd of people pulled down his pants, and to the amusement of the onlookers in the crowd, he exposed himself and urinated right onto Milan's spot. He could not see Milan because of the bull-protection barrier, and likewise, Milan could not see his face, but Milan got a good look at his micro-dick. Milan will be forever scarred by this horrific experience.
Before the run, the police clear the streets and try to keep them clear. Some kid across the street from Milan attempted to run across and got caught by the police. The kid tried to disobey their orders to run back, so they used force, clubbed him a few times, dragged him back to the fence and threw him over. The Spanish cops here do not hesitate to use an aggressive approach to law enforcement and crowd control.
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The photo sequences for the bull runs take up a lot of space on this page, so I have given the remaining runs their own pages. Here is the photo sequence for the Second Running of the Bulls.
After the bull run Milan slept from 9am to 5:30pm. I used the time to upload a copy of this travelogue to the Internet, which took 2.5 hours and cost me €12 at the Internet Cafe. The Internet cafe here is actually quite expensive, at €5.40 ($7.50) per hour. Bob cooked the remaining front half of the pig for dinner, with roasted shallots and green peppers, served with bread. Some of these delicious items are shown below.
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Strategizing earlier during our stay, we decided that if Bob or Jeff wanted to make an attempt to see the bull run in person, then Monday morning would be a good time to do so. We figured that the throngs of people would be lessened due to exhaustion from partying all day and night during the weekend, and because many would have gone back to work on Monday. Turns out, we were right.
Again, Milan stayed up all night, and I had Milan wake me up before he went to claim his spot. There were still many mostly drunk revelers on the street at this time, but less than half as many as Saturday and Sunday morning. We waited around for about half an hour before the city started cleaning the streets by multiple passes of ever-larger street cleaning machines, then by human sweepers with a dump truck, and then by pressure-washing with water hoses. After the cleaning, the barriers were erected, by putting 8-inch by 8-inch by 8-foot tall posts into preset holes in the pavement, putting cross-boards in to connect the posts, and then putting shims at the base of the posts to hold them tightly erect. After the barrier went up, about 6am, a trio of Spaniards, one man and two women, sat down on the top board of the barrier behind Milan. I claimed the corner post, and they were nice enough to save it for me while I stood and waited. After the first drunk tried to take my spot, which one of the Spanish women (a teacher of Spanish from Barcelona, nonetheless) hugged and protected for me, I took my perch on top of the 8x8 post in the corner, and had a really uncomfortable seat for about an hour. I snapped the first of the following photos of Milan (head in center) in his spot under the barrier, just before the bull run. The photographer Iñaki Porto took the second shot, during the first Running of the Bulls.
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The runners fill the street for a few blocks in advance of the start of the bull run, and are held back by a police cordon. Also, at each corner along the route there is a TV crew that films the run, so the local TV stations can show the entire run in sequence. Photos I took of the cordon (before the run, and remember that there are hundreds if not thousands of people behind that cordon) and the TV crew (during the run) is shown below.
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The police let the runners loose before the bulls are let go, a couple of minutes early, then there is a loud boom announcing the release of the bulls. At this point, runners start trotting, with some jumping up and down, trying to get an advance look at the bulls. The bulls are hard to see because they only stand about 5 feet tall at the horns, and most people are taller. Once I spotted the bulls, everyone was yelling "¡Toros!" and pandemonium broke out. I took a photo of the steers coming down the street, then tracked them with my camera waiting for it to finish processing the shot, but by the time it was finished the bulls had passed my spot and were out of view! Next time I will just watch with my eyes and let Milan do the photography. Below is the one photo I took. Look at the two steers just barely visible in the center right of the photo, and then imagine that the entire herd has passed by the during the few (3-4) seconds in which my camera was processing this photo.
Here is the photo sequence for the Third Running of the Bulls.
Back at the suite after the Running of the Bulls, with a sack full of hot churros, we downloaded our photos and then took a half-day nap, then Milan and I went to the Internet cafe to check email and upload the new travelogue. Last night I figured out how to make it load 5 times faster, so I made the changes this morning and uploaded the new page and photos this afternoon.
After the Internet cafe, we went to the Mercado Publico to take some photos and buy some fruit and meat for our last two days in Pamplona. I took a photo of a complete young pig in the meat case and of the fruit stand. This market is very nice and has a great selection of food.
In the evening, we went to eat paella at the outdoor food stalls. We took a round-about route, and ended up overlooking and walled park that was full of dear, peacocks, chickens, and ducks.
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I took a couple of photos of the food stalls, the second of which shows a Churreria (where they make churros). Bob and I ate paella, which was hearty and fairly good but contained too much rice and not enough seafood for my taste, and Milan ordered sausages with potatoes. Milan has not had good luck when ordering from the food stalls. His sausage dish came with french fries, but Milan wanted home fries with red sauce and mayonnaise, so what he got was sausages with home fries, no mayo, and they charged him for two separate dishes because of the substitution. Milan ended up paying €30 for his meal, about $42 for sausages and potatoes. Our paella was 12 dollars apiece.
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The fourth running of the bulls is our final one. We leave Pamplona in the early morning hours for Bilbao, in order to make our return flight at 7:35am tomorrow morning. Our rental car has been parked in an underground parking structure for our entire stay, to be used only to travel from and to Bilbao.
Milan again got up early and claimed his spot at 4:45am this morning. I got up at 6:30 and walked to the corner of the run, which is only two blocks from our suite. I asked Milan if he wanted anything for a snack, and, since he had already claimed his spot, we went to a local pastry shop and bought and ate some pastries. I hung around for 45 minutes waiting to get a clear shot of the corner, without success, but then the cops came and chased everyone off the run, and I decided not to try to take a chance on getting a clear photo and then running afoul of the police.
Here is the photo sequence for the Fourth Running of the Bulls.
Below is Milan's YouTube video of the fourth Running of the Bulls.
The end.
