Fanatics tour - ibiza, Valencia

The night before having to catch a flight from Barcelona to Ibiza Ross and I joined a cooking experience. We met a few people, stayed on and had a few drinks at the bar. A few drinks became many cocktails, sangria and beer. We hit gold because we had half price drinks and the beat bartender in Barcelona, well I think so anyway! We got roped into a pub crawl and ended up getting home at 5:30am after a long walk home drunkenly arguing like two old ladies about nothing haha! We got 2 hours sleep in and had to wake up to check out and head to the airport!

Just about to leave the hostel Ross throws his backpack on and has a chunder straight away, from here we know it's going to be a long day!

We made our way to the metro and caught it to the station nearest the shuttle buses to the airport. We jumped on a bus and realize we had caught the wrong one. After getting to the wrong airport, had to catch a shuttle over to the correct one, pretty frustrating with a hangover and 2 hours of sleep.

We checked in with 5 minutes left before they shut the baggage area, raced over the gate and made the flight. We had hardly sat for 2 minutes and our heads were already bobbing off to sleep. The seats didn't recline and it was a very broken sleep on our way to Ibiza.

I wasn't sure what Ibiza had in store for us. I had heard many stories of how expensive the place was, some even said they had spend €2000 in 3 days :S I actually found it alright. Meals were good at the restaurants, alcohol was just as cheap as anywhere else. The clubs on the other hand were a rip off.

As soon as we arrives at our accommodation we hit the beds and slept for 5 hours!! This gave us the energy to at least be ready for when chris and Evan came knocking at the door to get the night started!

We had gone our separate ways after the greek islands, evan went to Rome, chris stayed on in ios and worked and in 10 days we had all made our way to ibiza.

It was good to have the group back together, pre gaming (pre drinks) had started and we were back in great form. Chris was hammered and pulled out during the night knowing he had hit his limits, Ross and i drank but weren't over doing it, we still have our coughs and were wishing to shake it!

Grabbed some dinner and headed to a bar/cafe for a couple cheap drinks before heading into Eden night club. The club was great! I love the idea of having live entertainment in the clubs. There were dancers, people walking on stilts, people doing acts suspended from the ceiling, all sorts. The drinks were €13 a pop, ouch! We sobered up pretty quickly. Decided to head out to the beach party, it was packed, music was good but we didn't stay for long. We then headed back to Eden until about 6am, on the walk home snuck in a late night kebab as always!!

Day 2 Ross and I caught a boat cruise out to another beach and relaxed in the bloody hot sun for a couple hours. We made our way back, grabbed some dinner and pre-drinks for the night were just about to start. Tonight we were going to Space night club, apparently Armand van Halen were playing I think.This was a big night, it started with pre pre drinks, 2 hours taking it easy on a beach on the other side of the island. This was followed by 3 hours of unlimited free drinks at a bar down the road. Needless to say we tried to all get our moneys worth. We had a lot of fun in the bar with the guys and a few new friends we had made.

Next we were onto Space, unfortunately by the time we got there we were all pretty tanked. None more so than Ross haha. We payed 65 euro for the tickets (which included the transfer over to the other side of the island as well as the pre drinks in the bar) and I think we must have been inside for 10minutes. I saw Ross walk out the front door and not that I saw it he chundered down the stairs on the way out and by the time I had my sites on him he was heading towards the beach. I pulled him up early, spent an hour nursing him, grabbed a cab and took him back to the room. I was hungry so that morning decided to head out for a Kebab, I walked home and thought to myself, damn that was a good Kebab and being the guts I am on this trip, made my way back to grab a second one haha.

Day 3 I spent most of the afternoon on the laptop writing emails and going through photos. Tonight was the big night, we were heading to the biggest club in the world - Privilege.All three of us were in the same frame of mind, a few drinks and saving ourselves to enjoy the night listening to Tiesto. The club was massive, there were all sorts of amazing acts, the entertainment was great! We picked our spot and danced until 6am! The set was amazing and we all had a great night out.

Day 4 we caught a ferry from Ibiza to Valencia, onto a bus and out to the camping site. The next 2 nights were spent in tents…yuk!! Haha a tiny 2 man tent, big backpacks either side and just enough room for ross and I to spoon in the middle of them. It was a very restless sleep both nights, we slept on our towels and used our travel pillows. It was stinking hot and we were lying on rocks which did the back wonders. We had a fantastic dinner in Valencia, we caught a bus into town from the camping site and grabbed a chicken paella!! It was so so good, the meal came out on a cast iron plate which you share between two. Apparently Valencia is where the Paella originated which is why we could not resist indulging in it here. After dinner we walked the streets a little to get a feel for the place. We knew we weren't going to get much of an opportunity to see Valencia because the main reason for being here was for the La Tomatina festival. 1am and the amount of drunken aussies lining the streets was insane! Being part of a tour group, especially for this festival, we had 1400 fanatic-ians. This was good but at the same time it made it hard to get to know anyone really well and make some good friends, mainly because everyone was moving around so much in the group you really didn't have much time with one person.

We got back to our steaming hot tent and attempted to get some good rest, in preparation for the monster day ahead of us. Let me tell you it wasn't easy, the whole night I was sweating so much.

Day 5, this was the big one, this is what the tour with fanatics was all about, this was the day we become part of the La Tomatina festival, and let me tell you, what a festival it was!! We had an early bus to catch at 6am to the town of Bonul. It really wasn't anything special, just this little run down town. We had a decent walk down to the main street where the festival was held. There weren't many toilets and everyone was either drinking water because of the previous nights hang over or they were drinking beer / sangria. There were big line ups for the toilets and those that couldn't be bothered lining up, well they held it in for later, more on that subject in a minute. The fanatics crew were very keen to get to the ham pole and had been practicing human pyramids and all before hand. The ham pole is a very very greased up wooden pole, seriously like 3cm of thick pig fat, which stands about 7m high, right at the top is a massive leg of ham. Apparently no one has been able to retrieve the leg of ham for the last 7 years. We were all excited for the event and made our way into this narrow and long street. All the bars and restaurants had their doors and windows boarded up, units / apartments and draped tarps and all sorts across the front of their buildings. The buildings around were probably 3 - 4 stories high. On our way to the ham pole we crossed a bunch of Spaniards, they make fun by ripping peoples shirts off, anyone and everyone that walks past, male or female. Many ladies come prepared wearing two layers of shirts, the underneath one they tape to themselves. I saw many broken bra straps and all sorts. We detoured around this group of people and continued onto the pole. As soon as we got there people were already into it. There were so many different races at this festival and everyone had the same goal, get the ham. There were individual attempts, team efforts, we tried numerous times to create a solid human pyramid but its so busy, you get a decent height going and a few heros decide to take the glory and just jump from anywhere and climb and pull at people, it's frustrating but at the same time so much fun and that's just what it's all about. It is very intense in there, sharp shoes on your shoulders, elbows, feet and falling bodies landing on you and trampling on your head. We all got so hot and sweaty, tired and sore. I hoisted ross up to have a couple cracks at it, he got about 3 levels up at one stage. We also attempted our own human pyramid away from the pole but again was unsuccessful. Everyone is so keen I threw a couple light Japanese people up there as well to have a crack. Everyone looked out for each other when stacks collapsed, everyone was friendly except for the Spaniards haha, they are intense, they get into the heat of the moment, every now and then a couple small fights started. Quite a few times when someone got high up on the pole they would purposely pull people down to spoil the attempt. This one guy from Washington had a few attempts and did really well, twice he got high, comfortable and looked like getting there but was pulled down by the Spaniards. The 3rd attempted the crowd wanted him to win it so we all protected him by keeping the Spaniards at bay haha and boy did they not enjoy it. I think ross got punched in the throat getting in amongst it. This time monkey boy did it and the crowd went nuts, with the ham in hand he made his way down and crowd surfed his way out to place his ham in a safe spot!

Shortly after that the gun went off to officially start the festival. I was wondering how that many tomatoes are going to be brought into this tiny little street. It was jam packed with 40,000 people. They bring the tomatoes in with trucks, in the back are half a dozen people throwing tomatoes at the crowd, everyone now and then the truck stops and they lift the back and dump an absolute crap load of tomatoes. When a truck finally stopped near us and dumped a load I think the tomatoes were as deep as just below my knee cap. I saw it and got super excited and took a dive straight in. I had a fellow fanatic-ian beside me who got stuck on his back, someone took a dive over the top of him and he ended up under the tomato juice. I peeled the one guy off and pulled up this bloke who gasped for air, he said thank you by shoving a bucket load of tomatoes in my face. The fight was amazing, just throwing tomatoes at anyone and everyone, shoving tomatoes down peoples tops and pants haha just the best fun ever!! I think the fight lasted 45minutes or so. Chris, Evan, Ross and I kept getting sneaky shots in on each other. I would love to come back and do this again!! I loved it!

After the fight they get big fire hoses and wash the crowd down, the locals step out from their units with buckets of water and garden hoses and hose down the participants. There is such great atmosphere afterwards aswell. Everyone with their own stories. On the walk back up to the bus there were beers, sangria and bbq's with nice big chorizo's in the rolls, YUM!!

We took the bus ride back, pretty much fell asleep on the bus straight away, everyone was exhausted. When we got back to the camp site we hit the beach for a rinse off, laid on the beach and fell asleep for a couple hours. That night we took it easy and stayed at the camp site, grabbed a nice pork roll, a couple beers and watched people play giant twister and flip cup, there was live music and a dj playing all the good tunes!

I really enjoyed this tour with Fanatics, if I were to do it again Id probably do it with busabout just because it's a smaller group and you have more of a chance to get to know a few people a bit better. Other than that I had an absolute blast!

-Ryan