A Bull-Filled Day (Part I)

We have been fortunate to have met, through Nick and Kristy, Carlos and his wife Julie. Carlos has been working on our garden for us. (Pictures to come! Man does it look beautiful!) Julie babysits and cleans for Americans. On Sunday, we decided to take a long overdue anniversary "date day" and have Julie come over and babysit for us. This was hard for me as we are new to the area, and we don't know Julie that well. But Kristy and her friend Carla both use Julie. Everyone raves about her. So we decided to get some time together and leave the kids -- hard as that might be.

Bulls are a huge part of the culture in Portugal and on the island. It's a very foreign concept to Americans (who could never do anything like this in fear of PETA and other lawsuits.) The day starts with the "Running of the Bulls."

From wikipedia: The Running of the Bulls (in Spanish encierro, from the verb encerrar, to fence in, to lock/shut up, to pen) is a practice that involves running in front of a small group (typically a dozen) of bulls that have been let loose, on a course of a sectioned-off subset of a town's streets. Unlike bullfights, which are performed by professionals, anyone older than 18 may participate in an encierro. The purpose of this event was in origin to transport the bulls from the off-site corrals where they had spent the night, to the bullring where they would be killed in the evening. Youngsters would jump among them to show off their bravado.

As employees of the American military, John and Nick are not allowed to be on the "other side" of the wall to run with the bulls. (Like they would do it if they could -- I think not.) But coming to view the running from a safe place is a huge cultural event around the island and especially in the town of Angra, the largest city on the island.

We had no idea what we were in for. We had gotten directions from Julie and Carlo which basically included "find a safe place and don't come out of it until they blow multiple cannons to indicate the bulls are safely enclosed again."

So how does it work? First, you find a safe place. For some this includes trees, a roof, flatbed trucks, hillsides, etc. For us it included an enclosed structure with vending stands inside. The owner knew enough about the runs to know that you couldn't even open the sides of the structure for viewing because runners would change their mind and try to jump in (and then subsequently jump on people). So he opened two of the windows where bulls were less likely to charge, set up some vendors who served fantastic food, and let us watch in relative safety.

Some "machismo" men decide to go in the streets and taunt the bulls, run with them, run at them, try to touch them, etc. I have no idea why one would want to do this, but apparently, they do.



Here we are in our lookout fort -- that's Kristy's Mom, her brother Matt, and his girlfriend Betsy.

Nick and Kristy and their boys were also there. Here is Kristy with Jonah.

Prior to the bulls being let loose, men wandered the street (and often changed their minds and jumped in trees.) 

Here I am debating the wisdom of this decision to participate in a "bull run" ... (if only as a spectator.) A cannon would sound, indicating that a bull had been let loose. Six cannons, for the six bulls participating in this event, were let loose altogether.

I had two main thoughts while watching this. The first was that these men, out in the streets with the bulls, must have a screw loose. The second thought was that this was just not a nice thing to do to an animal. While I would never align myself with Peta, it's hard to watch animals being teased and "forced" into agression.  

We witnessed two very close calls during the event. The first was this man, who was not a crowd favorite when he antagonized the bull and it chased him into this crowd. He got up saying he was fine, but he had to be pretty banged up. And the crowd was FURIOUS at him for putting all of them in danger too. (Even though their "protection" was on the steps of the building. Not too smart if you ask me.) 

 Another view of the close call. This man actually tried to go back into the streets again -- but his fellow spectators refused to allow him to do so.

Many men and young boys would hang from trees, and then pick their feet up when the bull got close. 

Lunatics! 

 This man was the second close call. He was flipped by the bull and scraped his head on the pavement. It's one thing to decide to run as an in-shape young man. Why overweight, middle-aged men made the decision was even more confusing to me. (And notice -- there are NO women present. Not a one!) 

He came over to our "wooden box" under a tent to get some napkins to clean up his scrape. 

As the running ended, men with no training at all, would try to tie up the bull and lead him off his circular street running path and take him back to the crates that held them. When they were successfully returned -- all six of them -- a series of cannons would strike signaling it was safe to return to the streets. 

Here I am on the beautiful streets of Angra -- after the running was over. Thankful to be free, uninjured, and able to go to the bathroom.

We walked back to our vehicles after the running and headed to the arena for the next part of our bull-filled-day: the bull fights in the arena. I agreed only because these are "nice" bull fights (supposedly) and the bulls are not killed. But again, we had no idea what we were getting ourselves into.

What a day!