We arrived in La Rapita four days ago and found that there was a week of festival on in the town right next to the marina. this basically entails lots of music, fireworks and drinking until around 5am every day. However, everyday they also have a Pamplona style bull run through a gated off section of the town and we thought it would be rude not to give it a go. What a mistake!
We headed in to town for the start at 1230 and had a quick beer with Tom and his family to give us some dutch courage. At the start line it all seemed fairly undramatic, we were surrounded by other people of varying age, from 10 year old kids to 70 year old men and were thinking whats the worst that could happen!
I decided that it looked safe enough to do with my Nikon SLR and managed to get some pretty good shots right up close to the bulls as they ran past and some of the local kids "Torroing" the bulls in the square they end up in.
We then managed to end up in a small alley with no where to get cover and a bull at each end. We managed to get around one of them whilst some other guys distracted it and I went back to taking photos. I had just taken the one below when I realised I was now the only person that wasn't taking cover and made a dash for one of the railings, unfortunately the bull was way to quick for me and managed to knock me off as i tried to climb. Having managed to scramble to my feet i made another run for it, which was a fatal mistake, the bull was on me in a split second and had me on the floor again trying to stamp on me! The only thing I could think to do was try to put it on the floor to so it couldn't trample me so I rugby tackled its front legs and brought him down just infront of me. This gave me a small window to get to the barriers before he got up, which I didn't make! Thankfully at this point Tom and a few others were trying to distract it and I managed to crawl under the barrier, not the most graceful exit, but at least I was away from 300kg of raging bull!
Whilst it's a bit bonkers that these things are allowed to go on, I was really impressed with the safety precautions that were in place. No sooner had i stood up and three paramedics were dragging me off to an ambulance that was really close by. I try to insist that i was ok, which i mostly am, but they wouldn't let me leave until they had fully checked me over!
I now have a very high respect for the old school Matadors!
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