Several large trucks drive through the streets that are packed full of people and dump tomatoes - thousands of people and millions of tomatoes. We were fortunate to find a plaza which was in the thick of the tomatina yet up a couple of steps and set back a bit. Just 20 feet from us ... there was a wall of people. If you managed to push your way into the crowd, you could lift your feet without falling because you were held up by the all people around you.
Most of the buildings had their doors and windows boarded up and had tarps draped from the ground to the roof. A few wimps watched the tomato fight from the roofs of their buildings ... though several people, including my brother Eugene, were determined to "include" them and threw tomatoes and t-shirts up 3 or 4 stories. This is Eugene and Jolie prepared for the tomatoes.
There were just a couple of rules (which were poorly translated into English). You are supposed to "press" the tomatoes before you throw them and you cannot "quit" your shirt. Most people didn't understand the rules or didn't follow them (or both). If someone did not take their own shirt off, others tried to rip it off. Many young women were wearing only remnants of their shirts by the end of the tomatina. Nobody tried to rip my shirt off ... because I was wearing overalls.
The tomato trucks came and tomatoes started flying. Actually, not just tomatoes flew. Shirts, shoes, other clothing articles, water, sangria, sandwiches, etc. also flew. If something wasn't secured, it was not safe. A few boys were hanging onto an electrical box on the side of a building. The electrical box was hanging by the end of the tomatina.
After they called the end of the fight, Matthew thought the coast was clear. It wasn't.
Photos from previous years showed the tomato "soup" in the street to be knee deep. They must have improved their sewer system. This year, the tomato soup only got about ankle deep. So, our dreams of swimming in tomatos went unrealized.
There were five portable toilets ... near the entrance of the city area. We later found another one tucked behind and between some buildings. At first I thought this was absolutely crazy. Later, I realized that there was no possible way to navigate through the crowd to get to a toilet anyway ... so why bother? It didn't smell like urine so either people held it or the tomatoes neutralized the smell.
There were very, very few touristy type booths selling junk at ridiculous prices. Near the train station, there were a few selling disposable underwater cameras at 12 euros each ($18) and t-shirts (which people needed to get back on the train at the end of the day). Otherwise, nothing. At first, I thought ... "This is cool! The Tomatina hasn't been overrun with cheap souvenirs!" Later, I realized that if there had been booths near the city area ... they would have been crushed by the throngs of people and their merchandise thrown into the tomato fight.
Our souvenirs are our stained clothing and tomato seeds and skins that we'll find in our hair and in orifices of our body for the next few weeks.
Yana, Kerline, and I stayed until the end of the day. By 6 pm, the town still smelled of tomatoes but it was dead. We went into a pub. There was one table of boys who were buying time until they could drive in a relatively straight line. Other than that, there were 20 elderly gentlemen (locals) playing or watching table games. The streets were empty and sort of clean. Even after they swept, fire hosed, and ran through with a street cleaner ... there were t-shirts hanging over the power lines and tomato skins and seeds stuck in the cobblestones of the street.
People were taking their tarps down and unboarding their windows and doors. We saw a crew with an aerial lift (cherry picking truck) driving through the streets taking clothing items off the power lines. One woman was spraying the little window of her front door with window cleaner and scrubbing it vigorously ... while her painted wooden door and stucco building were stained shades of red.
You might think the locals hate it. But, we met a woman on the train who grew up in Buñol and she still comes back to her parents to see the Tomatina every year. Her 11 y.o. son loves it. You gotta love it - it is the biggest tomato fight in the world!!
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