Travel The World With Maria: Running with the bulls

Wow, the festival of Sam Fermin in Pamplona is absolutely insane, I had so much fun I can't even explain. The usually quiet city comes alive during the festival. Most people staying up all day and all night. I watched my first bull run from inside the bull ring. A rocket is fired to announce the release of the bulls, a second rocket is fired when the last bull has left. The aim is to run with the bulls to the bull ring, not to get there before them. But if you get to the bull ring too late you will be shut out. We watched the people run with the bulls down the street on the large screen. Some of these bulls were over 600kg. All the people that arrived in the ring before the bulls were booed and had things thrown at them. All of a sudden, one person tripped in the entry to the bull ring. Everyone else behind them, then started tripping over them, creating a huge pile up of people, blocking the entry. Everyone in the bull ring was gasping, watching the bulls getting closer and closer on the screen. Then came the moment everyone had been dreading, the bulls got to the bull ring and rammed straight into all the people. They then continued to try and climb over the people, which in the end they were successful. Crushing people in the pile as they trampled over them. We saw medics pulling people out of the pile that were bleeding, and blue from head to toe. After the medics had pulled out all the injured people, 33 injured, 3 in a serious condition, they released the cows. The cows still have horns but they have stoppers on the end. People try to dodge the cow as it charges at people in the ring, often people who provoked it. Usually they release 6 cows, one at a time. But on this day, they only released 2 as they had no medics left to deal with any more injuries.

That night we partied in town, ate tapas and drink sangria. The next day was the final day, I decided to run. After watching one (even if it was one of the most dangerous ones in history) I was feeling confident about what to do... and what not to do. We went down to the start of the run. We had to wait about an hour, in which most people were crapping their pants. Then the police pushed everyone through, to go and find our starting position. I started just before dead mans corner, which is a sharp turn in the run where most of the bulls hit the wall. I heard the first rocket go off, some people started running, but I was waiting nervously until I could see the bulls. All of a sudden, a wave of people started running towards me, I knew it was time to start running. As I was running, people were standing in the way, just trying to push people backwards and be a pain in the ass. Other people running were tripping over in front of me. I just kept running and running while watching behind me. Then the bulls passed me, a group of about 4-6. I didn't know if that was all of them, if there were more to come, or if there was a rouge bull, which can be very dangerous. One or two more passed me, by then I was becoming very out of breath. When I finally got to the entrance to the bull ring, they had shut the gate and we had to wait to get in. Probably because one of the bulls had broken away from the group and instead of running strait through the ring and out the door on the other side, it was running around the ring. After about a minute they re opened the gate and let us all in. I had made it! I ran with the bulls down the streets of Pamplona! After a while of being on the ring, they released the first cow. I stayed around the side of the ring watching people getting flipped around by the cows for a while, then decided it was time to get out.

That night was the closing ceremony, which for the Spanish, isn't a party, but a sad event because San Fermin is over. They sing "Podere Mi" (poor me) and waved candles in the air. We all partied anyway and got covered in sangria.