Want to see a completely different side of Spain, which ironically actually tells you a lot about the Spanish way of life? Our ventures to a largely unknown town called Bunol gave us this insight. You probably haven't heard of Bunol, but you probably have heard of why its famous - the world's biggest food fight, well, tomato food fight actually or in Spanish: La Tomatina.

On the last Wednesday of August, every year, you can head down to Bunol (which is about 40 km from Valencia) to participate in this wacky event where 120 tons of tomatoes are imported into the city (from Extremadura) by the truckload and then emptied onto its packed streets to be crushed and hurled at any of the 40'000 plus other locals and foreigners that are there. And the reason we say that this chaos is ironically giving insight into the Spanish way of life is because it's a fiesta approach to enjoying life and simultaneously raising some good moola for the community. The town itself forks out the cash to buy the tomatoes at a price of around USD 43'000 (about USD 144k on the whole festival) but makes back much more for itself. The whole festival is actually a weeklong celebration of eating, dancing, fireworks and lots of sangria that culminates with someone climbing a greased pole to grab some ham at the top and set off hooters that signal to the thousands of passers through that tomato throwing chaos is about to go down.

We took the quick-in/quick-out approach to the festival by choosing to stay in nearby Valencia and join the massive crowd of people that come into Bunol just for the day. You could alternatively head into Bunol the day before the festival, or a couple days before, to really get into the spirit of the fiesta, but you better catch an early wake up if you want to take this route cause the town is really small and there isn't a ton of accommodation. This is why most people take the Valencia and (very) early morning train approach to getting there tomato fix. Interestingly, we were able to get a lekker 4* hotel in Valencia for less than half the price of a bed in one of the mostly sold out hostels…guess this shows the type of crowd attracted to this festival. And getting to the festival and back was remarkably easy as the town-folk in Valenicia are well aware of why there are so many visitors in their city and they come to the party by gearing up the stations and people working there to help you find your way. That said, a little bit of pre-game research also helped us to know what we were in for and help us figure out where to go and what to do and is probably not a bad idea if you planning to go to La Tomatina. (There are plenty web resources for the festival but we're sure that hostels are probably well equipped for their visitors and probably give out lots of info when you get there - even our hotel helped us by telling us the best way to get to the train station and giving us a train schedule.)

When you get to Bunol, you arrive at the top of a hill and need to make your way down to the city centre. It's easy enough to just follow the masses but we literally just headed down until we found the cops and their drink-blocks where they ensure that no-one is taking glass or bottle caps into the festival. Then we tried to squeeze through the small streets of said masses of people to try get as close to that greasy hammed pole as we could. We eventually gave up on this idea when we literally could not move anymore and succumbed to the wave of the crowd to move us - you'll need to make sure you're on the first train out of Valencia and literally running at the train change stop (which we weren't actually aware of, but don't worry, again, there are sign posts of where to go or just follow the people) to catch the first train into Bunol at around 7:30am, which we missed, to try give yourself a small chance of actually getting close to the main square, Plaza Mayor. If you caught in the mad crowds in the small streets, just remember that they still have to get five trucks through that very street. So our advice would be to leave the ridiculous crowds by slipping down a side road and try get to a less crowded place where you'll actually be able to raise your arm to throw a tomato - afterall, you'll see by all the plastic coverings on the walls that most of the city centre is gonna get tomatoed. We were lucky enough to find ourselves in the spot where the trucks first enter the festival. There was quite a big crowd there but there was also enough room for the trucks to pass through relatively easily and for us to grab and throw them tomatoes.

The food fight itself didn't last too long and after about an hour and a half or so and five truckloads of tomatoes, a cannon was sounded to signal the end of the festival. It worked out well cause by this point we were actually tomato fighted out and ready to call it and head back. But instead we joined the masses again and took ourselves and our what-once-was-nice-and-white-but-was-now-tomatoey-red clothes out of there by making your way through the streets where locals used their hose pipes and buckets to try their hardest to help us get clean enough to get back onto the train. You aren't allowed onto the train covered in tomatoes or without a t-shirt so we spent a bit of time making sure we were clean enough to get back to Valencia.

Afterall was said and done, we were back in Valencia to spend few days in the city. There isn't too much to see and do there and it's just really another city in Spain with no major attractions. Similar to Liverpool though, they are trying to build some new attractions and some really awesome buildings to create a culture hub but these weren't enough to excite us at the time and we were really just more interested in making sure we were at that crazy, but lots of fun, tomato fight.

Trek on…Brett and Darren

P.S. Go check out our pics from La Tomatina and here some tips that we took out of the festival:

-Wear white or light coloured clothes

-Don't wear anything you'd actually want to wear again

-Wear goggles so you can see what's going on during the fight and you don't get acidy tomato juice in your eyes. You can buy them in Bunol for about 2 to 3 euros a pair.

-Try take a waterproof camera or buy a waterproof disposable camera when you get to Bunol cause you will want to take pictures.

-Take as little as possible with you and put any money or your return train tickets into a zip-lock bag so you it doesn't get destroyed.

-Don't take cellphones, rather have a meeting point or see-you-back-in-Valencia plan if you get split up

-Don't try hang around the masses in the small streets. Rather find spots that are less crowded…everyone will get their fare share of tomatoes. The crowds are also much less rough here so you can worry more about the tomato fight than surviving unscathed.

-If you do want to see people trying to get to the ham, then research exactly how to get into town very early or get in the day before, cause we tried this and although we took the first train out of Valencia, we lost out with the unexpected train switch in Valencia and got there too late to see this part.

-As a worst case, there are make-shift showers at the train station in Bunol so you can get clean with these. There's a queue but if you not clean enough from the locals by the time you get to the station there are at least showers there.

-Keep your t-shirt or money to buy one at the end cause they won't let you on the train without one.