Jayley on the Road: Running of the Bulls Opening Ceremony!

We were fortunate enough to be able to work for the tour company "Topdeck" in Pamplona for Running of the Bulls festival. It was unpaid work but the benefits were endless - free booze, food, accomodation (okay it was just a tent but still!) and a free festival! What more could you want? So we made the long and painful 27 hour journey there from Egypt and were greeted at the campsite by the rest of the amazing Topdeck crew. The first couple of days were spent setting up 150 tents and double that in lilos for the passengers travelling with Topdeck. Lets just say we are not going into the professional tent building business any time soon ... Luckily afternoon beverages were always readily available to get us through.

Our amazing Topdeck crew

Once the hard labour was done and the passengers arrived, the highly anticipated "Opening Ceremony" was upon us. This is the day that marks the start of the festival and would have to be the funnest day we have ever had. We were all dressed up in our traditional white outfits with red sashes and scarves, and most importantly our sack of sangria! Arriving in the main town was out of this world! Every single person was dressed in white and going absolutely crazy with festival spirit, but we hadn't seen anything yet. As the mayor made his speech from town hall that was shown on huge screens throughout the town everyone held there red scarves high in the air chanting "Viva San Fermin!". You couldn't help but join in and feel as though you had been a part of it all along. And then the mayor fired the canon to signify the start of it all and the town literally went wild and so did we. Sangria went everywhere leaving no ones clothing still coloured white, along with shaving cream, flour, eggs and the occasional stream of mustard and ketchup. Unless experiencing it yourself nothing could ever describe the adrenaline rush from being amongst it all. The streets were heaving with people fuelled on excitement and huge amounts of sangria. The party didn't stop as we danced and sung our way through the streets past marching bands and Spaniards pouring sangria straight into our mouths. Buckets of water came down from the balconies above us which were a welcome refreshment to wash the copious amounts of sangria off that were now causing our eyelids to stick together. We stumbled upon bar after bar filled with people dancing inside and out onto the street. We ducked into one purely to use the bathroom but ended up being swept onto the dance floor by Spaniards spinning and twirling us around and offering us more sangria. We could go on and on about the greatest day of our lives for ever so lets just say that on the 6th of July next year I know exactly where I will be and that is back on the streets of Pamplona doing it all over again.