Hola!
To All the Folks back home!,

San Fermin Was one of the best weeks of my life, so this will be quite a long blog entry so bare with me :p

Firstly I hope you have all liked the photos and videos I uploaded on too Facebook :P I just wanted to give everyone an idea of what San Fermin is about.

Basically Pamplona is a city that has about the same population of Canberra and its located in the North of Spain. Every Year in the second week of July the whole city dresses up In red and white. People come from all over the world to join the party and each morning of the Festival at 8am 12 700kg Bulls run 825m through the old part of Pamplona into the bull ring. Since there are 8 different bull runs, on each bull run a different breed of bulls is used.

I was pretty lucky as I got free accomodation for my 4 night stay in pamplona, because I couchsurfed with this group of Americans who were all my age who happen to be living in Pamplona for the summer! That was pretty wicked as every night We would all just drink a s*** load and party with everyone else in the city! Half way through my stay the guys hosted a French Chick for a week or so and there is a funny story to go with that LOL.

There is so much more to San Fermin that the running of the Bulls! There are markets, beer stands, huge food stands set up and massive stages set up all over the city that play host to live bands and Djs each night. Not to mention the insane fireworks show they put on each night at 11pm as well! Its just crazy how different it is to the lifestyle were used to back home and when you see s*** like old people partying at 2am and familys still out at 3am is crazy. There is a HUGE amount of rubbish though because everyone just buys there grog from supermarkets then drinks in random places all over the city and the police are fine with you doing this! You can drink in the streets both day and night, so pretty much every night is one big party with everyone getting wasted, meeting all the locals was fun :P. I got to see the maddest Queen tribute band.

Where I was staying was about 15mins walk to where everything went down so it was all very handy. Now to describe actually running with the bulls! This was crazy and dangerous as you drink and party all night then run with the bulls off no sleep and alot of people drink still just before there about to run. The streets are very narrow aswell prob 7-8m wide at the most so there certainly is no room to hide from the bulls. I ran a total of 3 times and loved every minute of it its the craziest adrenalien rush and so much fun all at the same time, just the atmosphere of being on the streets and running you cant match that sort of thing. The fact you look above you and hundreds of people are up in their balconys all watching you! At least you get some warnining before the bulls are let loose on you, because they let off 2 fireworks and once the 2nd firework has been let off thats when the bulls start their run. When your running you focus on 2 things only not trying to get hit by the bulls and not trying to fall over. Because there are 3500 people who run each morning. Usually your fine if you stick to the side, you just have to watch out for the bulls who get seperated.

Once you get into the stadium thats a special moment because everyone cheers for you then its a hugh relief you made it safetly, after all the bulls have made it they let off another firework. Then probably 10 mins after all that is done, they let 1 bull out at a time for 5-10 mins that basically runs round and hits people and some people get pretty f***ed up, a few people had to get carried out of the arena, but most get up after being hit because its just like being smashed really bad in rugby. The bull doesnt have sharp horns so you dont need to worry about that. They let out a total of 6 bulls to run around with the crowd. Its like a family sporting event, families and old people go and watch a bull run around amd smash people, mind you this is all at 8am.

Its time to stop typing Ive done my best to try and describe my amazing experience during San Fermin, but you really have to go there to experience it for yourself and I recomened you ALL do it at least once in your life no matter how old you are!

Thanks for reading,
Take Care,
Cheers,
Andrew