Pamplona - Week 2

With the first load of passengers expected to arrive round Midday Monday morning, the morning was just finishing everything off and getting ready to finally do some serious work. Couldn't really go too hard out as we had to drag our arses out of bed at 5am to feed everyone breakfast and I’m not the best at early starts and combining it with being in the kitchen ain't a good combo. The days now are pretty much for rest as we work at least 2 shifts a day and with the pool turning more manky by the hour , normally find ourselves retiring to a shady tree drinking piss before cooking up a feed.

Tuesday night was marked as the night for an absolute bender, as most of the passengers and vannies have arrived and ready to party hard. I was quite surprised by the choice of music the DJ's were playing, expecting some kind of RnB and cheesy pop, it was indeed hard house and euphoric classics not heard for years which everyone was really getting into.
The highlight of the night would have to be when Jo & Jacquie came in behind me and proceeded to grab my arms and legs and carted me off the dance floor and as I was off my tits looking up at a sea of green leaves and people peering down, was quite the mind bend. I did in the chaos loose my camera which I was a little bummed out about but was found by a fantastic search party who searched high and low, cheers guys!!

With a 5am start the next morning and managing to crawl into bed at around 4:30, myself and just about everyone else where in no state of mind to be cooking breakfast for 1200 people, even if they were just as shady and didn’t want to digest the fatty breakfast on offer. As I was late for the morning start the punishment was to cook dinner with the rest of the late crew for a bus load of passengers that where meant to roll up at midnight. So after cooking up some kind of deep fried fish dish, we waited and waited until it was announced that the bus had run out of fuel and would be arriving at 4am, Ahhh great! And with another 5am start and opening ceremony AND a security shift it was gonna be a long day.

Well it was time for the festivities to begin, and to start it all off was the opening ceremony held out front of the town hall. I knew the Spanish liked to party hard, but fuck me it was just madness with everyone packed into a plaza drinking sangria and popping Champaign and going nuts. Wanting to get right into the thick of it we pushed our way through the streets to the back on the plaza and just as we had found out primo position the crowd surges begin.
Having pretty much lost everyone as soon as we entered with only a few of our group insight before being whisked away in a surge. It was like currents in the ocean, all of a sudden you move 10 meters forward then once regaining your foot hold you’re off again and before you know it your right in the think of it, front and centre. We were swaying at 45 degree angles with out arms pinned to our sides and trying not to fall onto the bed of broken glass and crushing feet. During this time I was trying desperately to hold on to my beloved bottle of sangria until inevitably it got wedged between two burly guys and watched as it was taken away in the current. With my attention now off trying to retain my alcoholic beverage, I started thinking that this could be the ideal place for pickpockets. With this brain fart I did the token pocket tap only too find that I had become a victim, ahhh bugger.
It wasn’t such a bad lose though as I had taken everything out and just left 50 Euro in it and had luckily left my camera with Jacquie who never managed to get right into the thick of it, so managed to retain my camera AGAIN!

Having to cut the festivities short as I had my first security shift that night, I wasn’t the happiest camper around, but turned out to be a fantastic night.
Being on security just meant that you where a friendly face who can speak English and to help people out. My first location was outside the main gate to the bar where the Spanish police where stopping people bringing in drinks which was fantastic for me as I managed to get absolutely shit faced off people offering me there unfinished drinks, although I thinking that’s where I also picked up my nasty cold.
Next it was off to the DJ box which happened to be right at the peak of the night. This is where I realised how much power a shirt saying “Security” can have, girls seem to flock to the authority that the shirt portrays, although I didn’t really have much at all except for a torch to scare people out of the trees.

Having all of the next day off to recoup the energy levels, another big night was in order and as I had my first bull run the following morning I had a bit of a conundrum as too weather to get plastered or too be in my prime to tackle the bulls. A comprise had to be mad and the plan was to hit the sack early-ish. So starting rather early I filled my newly acquired water vessel with a vodka Malibu mix which was surprisingly tasty all be it extremely alcoholic and set off to find the tent numbers which were acquired the night before.
Now my memory is not my greatest asset and being able to remember numbers definitely not my fortay, so what originally started out as two numbers has grown into 6 variations and so the only option was to search all of them for the tents I was looking for.
After about half an hour all up of searching and awaking random people the right tents were found and by far one of the most embarrassing moments endured.

It happened on the morning of the Bull Run and not having any idea of the time, was interrupted by a tour leading doing her routine wake up call at 5:30am to get on the bus. It did get worse however as we decided to continue in our bliss and upon exiting the tent were greeted to a round of applause by half her bus and when asked which bus number I was on, I proclaimed I was with ground crew. Needless to say it spread quickly through the tour leaders and during breakfast I was aptly reminded of the goings on. Thank god most of them were leaving that afternoon.

So a fantastic night, but not really the ideal starting conditions for a life or death bull race, so after donning the whites it was off to the bus equipped with my sangria to Pamplona.
So this was it, after finding our position in front of the town hall on the course, my drunken haze quickly disappeared as the adrenalin started to pump through my veins. After taking in tip from past runners we felt pretty prepared and were anxiously waiting the first cannon to sound which signalled the release of the first pack of bulls.
After the first cannon sounded we ran just past Dead Man’s Corner to wait for the first pack to go past, which they did at quite a steady pace but the first pack aren’t the ones to worry about, it’s the second pack which has all the angry fuckers in it. Upon the sound of the second cannon in which the next pack of bulls are released we started bolting down the street trying to get to the arena before they passed us. At this point I could hardly breath as the adrenalin was absolutely intense and we had no idea where the bulls actually where, all I knew is that I didn’t want to get stuck in the small entrance tunnel to the arena as there is no where to hide and with the police beating people who were trying to jump the barriers there was only one choice and that was too go through the tunnel. Turns out they weren’t too far behind at all, as after about 5 seconds of entering a massive roar went up as the pack of bulls entered the arena, but now it was time for the real fun to start.

Once the running bulls had exited the arena the gates where shut and the smaller bulls released into the arena where everyone who has ran through the streets is gathered and is trying to get away from these angry guys, as one guy was killed the day before the adrenalin was peaking out and was so intense my legs where starting to turn to jelly, so I decided to jump to the sidelines & watch the countless people being flicked about. It went on for about 20 minutes before everyone left the arena to go and party in the street…however we had garbage duty that morning  Not quite the best way to relieve all that adrenalin.

With most of the tours leaving on the Saturday afternoon the camp was starting to empty and out security shift on Saturday night was pretty sedate, except for the capture and arrest of the “Nipple Sucker” and a few mattress throwing incidents.

The next couple of days we just packed everything up and said our goodbyes before out 21 hour bus ride back to London on the Monday night.

All in all it was a good trip, have met some fantastic people along the way even if I did pick up a case of diarrhea and a hell nasty throat infection and cold.
Would I do it again? Probably not with the company I did it with, way to many power trips and just no real organization with doing things at least 3 times the norm, but definitely the way to do the festival.

Check out the pics here >>> http://redmonkey.smugmug.com/gallery/1659693