cheznmal

Ok, so by now you’ve probably noticed that these posts are all out of sequence – we went to Russia so that we could experience a white Christmas.  When we woke up in St Petersburg on Christmas day, it was snowing (box suitably ticked).  Unfortunately, it was also bloody cold.  Christmas eve was a teeth chattering -20C and whilst it got colder when we got to Lap Land, the climate in Russia is humid and that makes it feel MUCH colder.  By Xmas day it had warmed up to about -15C but it was still bitter – any exposed skin just hurt.  This was our Christmas lunch – cold rabbit pie.  Mmmmmm.

The Russians don’t celebrate Christmas in December, their Russian Orthodox Christmas is in January, so all the regular tourist attractions were still open.  We headed off to see the Hermitage.  This was our first glimpse of the manner in which the Tzars liked to live it up.  St Petersburg is sometimes referred to as the Venice of the north because of the canals and the palaces are also very opulent in a European kind of way (think versailles) and the art collection is on a scale with the Louvre.

This is one of the many canals – frozen solid of course.  The ice in some parts is still pretty thin, but it didn’t stop some drunks walking along this canal at night.

This is Catherine’s Palace.  If anything, this one was more opulent than the Hermitage.  I swear, the ball room was replicated in the movie “beauty and the beast”

This looked like fun – unfortunately our guide hurried us on before we could take one for a spin.  Gotta love tours….

We went to a Russian folk dancing show.  Outside, in the foyer, Catherine and Alexander the great were serving champaign and vodka shots.

The Church of the Spilled Blood in St Petersburg. Impressive from the outside, but nothing compared to what’s on the inside.

Yep, this is the inside.  These aren’t paintings, they’re mosaics – all done with glass and ceramic mosaic tiles about a cm square.

Of course, the church also made for the perfect spot for some artwork by Chez.  She made a number of snow angels all over Russia, but this one was in the best spot.  After she’d finished, we noticed a sign saying “stay off the snow”!

On the way south from St Petersburg to Moscow, we stopped at this monastery.  Chez was forced to wear a skirt.

By this stage it was getting really cold again. We actually got to wear the balaclavas that we bought in Belfast! (Couldn’t wear them there of course).  On the way, we stopped at a Banya.  The procedure for the Banya is this – 1. steam yourself in a small Cedar sauna with at least 15 other people until you’re ready to pass out.  2. At the point of losing consciousness, you get the person next to you to dip some reeds in the hot water and flail you with them  until your skin is somewhat raw. 3. Stagger outside into the snow and jump into the nearest ice hole or, failing that, the largest pile of snow. 4. Repeat from 1.

The theory is that shocking the system in this way is rejuvenating and, to some degree, they’re right.  Unfortunately, one of the girls in our group had the Flu and decided that she wanted to jump in the Sauna with the rest of us.  At that point, the room became an enormous and extremely effective petrie dish.  The following day, we were all sick.

There were no Ice Holes to jump into so the snow had to do.

Finally got to Moscow.  This is St Basils in Red Square.

They set up an enormous skating rink in Red Square for New Year which, incidentally, is the biggest party day on the Russian calendar.

Changing of the Guard outside the Kremlin.

We went to see the Ballet in St Petersburg so we decided to go to the Circus in Moscow – what a mistake.  The Russians still have a passion for making bears dance and jump on petrified cows.  Also, there was a “petting zoo” in the foyer which included such cuddly creatures as leopards, tigers, lion cubs and arctic foxes, all suitably drugged to keep them quiet.  Hmm.  Should have splurged on tickets to the Bolshoi instead.

We visited this Cold War bunker which is actually 18 floors down in the centre of the most ordinary residential suburbs in Moscow.  Apparently, they told the residents that they were working on the rail network whilst they built it in secret.  Guns, gas masks, rocket launching capability, you name it, it was all there.

Chez had to make some serious decisions regarding the fate of the free world whilst she was there!

During the 1930’s, many of the railway stations were elaborately decorated in order to inspire the public.  Almost like palaces for the people.

We brought in New Year in Red Square.  We had planned on having a big night but it was SO cold!  The ground in Read Square was frozen and no amount of smuggled-in vodka was enough to keep you warm.  We had to buy rusky hats that were one size too big so that we could fit our beanies on under them.  By the time the clock struck midnight and the fireworks were over, we all scrambled straight back to our hotels – party animals, NOT.

Can’t knock the view though.  Seeing the fireworks over St Basils was definitely the highlight of the trip.

New York, New York.  Melting pot of a myriad cultures and ethnic groups all tenaciously holding onto their individuality whilst proudly declaring their solidarity and unitedness in this amazing city – a living organism in it’s own right.  We both couldn’t get enough of the place.  We’re not normally city lovers, but you can’t help but be impressed with New York.  With a million ways to be entertained, fed, housed, employed and inspired, it is a landscape as awe inspiring as anything we’ve seen in nature, except this has been entirely made by man, for man. We hired some bikes and spent the entire first day riding around Central Park. We got here in January, so it was still pretty cold – actually snowed one day.

Chez is fascinated by squirrels.  This one had a typical New Yorker attitude, “What….no nuts!?”

No, these aren’t ghosts skating in Central Park.  I had to take an HDR image to get this photo, but you get the general idea.  We’ve never been skating in an outdoor rink before so we came back later and had a crack after the sun set.  It was so amazing to be skating around with New York towering above you on all sides.

This is the view from the top of the Rockefeller building at dusk.

The bright lights of Time Square.

We did the circuit line ferry trip around Manhattan to get our bearings.  Unfortunately, Ellis Island was still closed due to cyclone damage, but you can still imagine that it would have been bloody impressive sight for the immigrants from England and Ireland arriving here by ship in search of a better life.

Grand Central Station.

We stayed with a girl we met in Istanbul, named Anna, at her flat in Brooklyn.  Everyday, we made our way over Brooklyn Bridge into Manhattan by train but it also made for a very nice walk.

Upper Manhattan as seen from Brooklyn Bridge.  A bit cloudy this day.  The Bridge is crammed with cars, tourists as well as locals on foot and bikes.  Crossing the bridge is a pretty popular pastime, even for the locals and you can see why.  Strange that we don’t do a similar thing with our Bridge in Sydney.

Can you recognise these steps?  If you’re a fan of the show, “Law and Order” or “the God Father”, they should be familiar.  In fact, almost everywhere we went, it felt like we were in a movie set.

Enjoying a Pastrami on Rye at the Famous Katz’s Deli.  Also the location for the famous orgasm scene out of “When Harry Met Sally”.  This one sanga cost $17 (including pickles) but look at the size of the thing!  We shared.

Apparently, Katz became famous during the second world war when they offered the service of sending salamis to service men in the field for local families.

On the streets of Soho at night.

Central Park was also beautiful after dark

The World Trade Centre memorial.

Chez finally has a run in with the law.  Notice how big the smile on her face is.  Hmmm…..

We sat here on Wall street and ate the biggest muffin I’ve ever seen whilst watching all the budding Gordon Gecko’s race past with their mobile phones and brief cases.  Unfortunately, we couldn’t get into the stock exchange, but we had a lot of fun just people watching outside.

The Business District.

The Arse End of the Business District.  Ahhh, there was a whole bus load of pushy Japanese tourists there that day.  Shame the bull wasn’t real!

Yeah, I know – too many photos of Brooklyn Bridge.

The Flat Iron building.

The things you don’t expect to find in the middle of NYC.  We found this guy in Central Park Zoo.  I know a lot of people don’t like zoos, but this one was really good – much better than London.

The Museum of Natural History.  We gave ourselves only a couple of hours here, but we could have spent a couple of days.  They actually have an entire real T-Rex skeleton.

Seems we’re always running away from T-Rexs.  See Bolivia post.

We went to see two Broadway shows.  This one, The Book of Mormon, cost us an absolute bomb.  “The best musical of the century” – NOT.  Even with the century being only 12 years old, it was still a ridiculous claim.  We went to see Chicago a few days later – it was much better.

The inside of the Guggenheim.

taking a stroll along the Hudson.

Upper Manhattan from the top of the Empire State Building.

We tried to get tickets to see the Knicks at Madison Square Garden but we already had tickets booked to Mexico before the game was on, so we went to see the Nets play at their home stadium in Brooklyn.  Even bought a Nets beanie!

Yep, we had to do it.  Should be familiar to all the Seinfeld fans.

Incredible works of art at the Museum of Modern Art (?)

This is Anna.  We crashed at her place and probably drove her nuts for 10 days.  Amazingly generous person and really made our experience of New York so much better by giving us the local perspective.  Thanks heaps, Anna.  Our place next time!

Doesn’t really need explanation.

Sunset over lower Manhattan as seen from Brooklyn.

This is the main square in La Paz.  We flew is here from the Galapagos and stayed a few days to acclimatise.  We thought we were doing so well by acclimatising in Mexico City, but after two weeks at sea level in the Galapagos, it was like we had never acclimatised at all.  La Paz airport is the second highest (commercial) in the world, 4058m.

You can see how hilly this place is.  Walking around here at 3800m is pretty slow going!

I had to get a photo of these guys.  This is the Bolivian answer to traffic control.  These Zebras are on most corners in the city centre and are there generally be nice to people.  They help people across the road, entertain stopped traffic with acrobatics, even polish windscreens.  Why can’t we have this at home?

Taking people shots in Bolivia is a bit tricky.  The older generation are still of the opinion that having their photo taken captures their spirit, so I had to sneak around with the long lens and take photos from shop fronts.  Lucky I didn’t get picked up for being a pervert.

Still don’t know where the whole bowler hat trend came from….Also, so I found out later, the women are not really shaped this way.  Their skirts have a number of pleats representing to various cultures and this makes them, ah,….poofy.  May not be all due to the pleats in this woman’s case.

We headed off to the Salar De Uyuni.  This is the world’s largest salt flats and covers a stagering 10,582 square kilometres.  Amazingly, it only varies in altitude by one metre over that whole area so, apparently, it is sometimes used to calibrate the orbiting distance of satellites.  Anyway, during the wet season, it gets covered in a layer of water which turns it into a 10,000 square km mirror.  There were a number of lead and Borax mines that attracted international interests, but after the big companies left, they also left their rail networks which, ultimately, turned into a railway graveyard.

I was surprised to see the Kiwi flag but nothing to represent the Aussies!

This is the famed Salt Hotel.  It’s a dump.  There are a number of these around the Salar, but this one is the only one actually on it. It’s made out of salt (inside and out) and doesn’t actually function any more.  Not a bad thing considering it used to (and still sometimes does) dump it’s waste water on the Salar.

The Salar contains about 10 billion tonnes of salt an the locals remove about 25,000 tones annually. Not a renewable resource but should last about 400,000 years…

Ok, when there’s no water and therefore no mirror effect, this is the sort of thing you end up taking photos of!  Because there are no real reference points on the Salar you can do some pretty silly stuff with the camera.

Chez actually found this flamingo egg in the middle of the Salar. What are the odds of finding a white egg in the middle of a 10K square km white salt flat!!?  No, it wasn’t as big as it looks.

Where’s the water at?!

There are maybe a hundred jeeps getting around on the Salar a any given time but because it’s so huge, you almost always feel alone.

After the Salar, we headed south into the desert.  So weird to go from all white to all red in a matter of minutes.  It’s still at around 4000m and with all the salt around the air is SOOOO dry.  We were looking like prunes for days after this.

Condor rock.

The entire area is volcanic and surrounded by dormant (and not so dormant) peaks up to 6000m

In a way, this place reminded me a bit of Namibia.  Really amazing and unexpected scenery.

Who would have thought that you’d find flamingos at 4000m?  Because of the shallow salt lakes, there were flamingos everywhere.

Rock tree.  Not the most imaginative name…

This is Red Lagoon.  Because of the algae or minerals in the lagoons, most have an unusual colour.

This place was at around 5,200m and was still active.  Bubbling mud pools, you name it.  The jeep actually had a hard time getting here because the air was so thin (also it was a piece of shit jeep).

This is me defying death….not.  The steam wasn’t that hot.

Another thing you wouldn’t expect in the desert – hot springs.  They were SOOO good to sit in before the sun started really cooking the place.  Because you’re so high here, it can be blisteringly hot in the open and still cold in the shade.

Of course, after the Salar we had to have a crack at downhill bike riding on the North Yungas Road – AKA “Road Of Death”.  In 1995, the Inter American Development Bank christened it as the worlds most dangerous road because of the 200 to 300 travellers killed on it annually.  Now it’s mainly traversed by Bike tour groups, so it’s not that bad unless you have chosen to use a cheap operator who supplies bikes with dodgy breaks etc.  People still die on the road.  One Chilean girl fell off the cliff after stepping back to take a photo!  This is my Bad Ass look.

Hard to keep any eye on where you’re going when the scenery looks like this.

That’s the North Yungas Rd hugging the cliffs.

This is Chez’s Bad Ass look.

At he bottom of the road you’re back into rain forrest.  We recovered at a wildlife refuge.  We weren’t supposed to touch the animals, but….

We also got eaten by sandflies here because the tree hugging guide didn’t like us using DEET!

We ended up with an extra day in La Paz because of road blocks on the road to Titicaca, so we took a trip up to Chacaltaya.  I swear, the road to get here was worse that the one we biked down the previous day.  The bus dropped us at 5,300m and we walked the remainder 200m to the summit.  It’s actually an old ski resort, but the glaciers have retreated and now it’s abandoned.

It still snowed on us, though.

This was the highest Chez had been (Maxed out at 5,200m on Kilimanjaro). Good effort.

After Chacaltaya we visited this place called Moon Valley.  The weather was much better.

This is the ski village of Kiruna in far north Sweden.  It’s not really that lat – about 4pm, but the sun doesn’t rise here in winter.  We got kitted out for our husky trip here.  Check out Chez’s funky boots.

When we woke the next morning, this was the view from our window.  Everything was pastels.  The hills reflect the hidden sun and turn luminous pink.  Even the snow looks a pale blue because it reflects the purple sky.

That day we met up with our team leader and were introduced to our dog teams.  We thought that we’d be just sitting in a sled and be dragged about for three days but it turned out that each of us had a team of four dogs that we were responsible for harnessing, feeding, housing and cleaning up after.

These are our teams.  Each dog had it’s own personality so we ended up getting pretty attached to them after three days in the snow.

We thought that we’d have the big fluffy versions, but many of the dogs were pretty small.  But they were REALLY strong.

This is an example of the facilities up north.  We quickly learned that at -25C, your wet ones freeze before you can use them when you go to the toilet.  The secret is in the timing.  Only pull them out of your pocket just before they’re needed!

There was a sort of display Sami village in the town near the Ice Hotel and they had some reindeer, so we decided to give them a feed.  What do you feed a reindeer?  Moss.  Go figure.

At -30C, a furry nose comes in very handy.

In some of the remote Sami villages, they still use teepees.

This was the Church in Jukkasjärvi, where the Ice Hotel is.  Wasn’t really interested in the church, just couldn’t get over the colour of the sky!

Entrance to the Ice Hotel

The Foyer.  Outside it’s -25C but inside it’s a balmy -5C.  Thermal underwear recommended!

The Chapel.  You can actually get married here.

A number of rooms are designed by artists and each has a theme and name.  This one is called “Dragon’s air”  It’s all made out of ice and the lights are actually embedded in it.  Our room wasn’t quite this fancy, but similar.  Chez actually slid off the bed because her reindeer skins weren’t on the solid ice bed properly.  I had to laugh.  Chez wasn’t happy.

Can’t remember the name of this one, but you get the idea. You’re sleeping inside a whale.

The Ice Bar.  All the ice glasses for all the Ice Bars around the world are made here. The ice is collected from the river that runs next to the Hotel.  Because the water is slow moving, it squeezes out all the air byubbles and creates ice that is crystal clear.

We had a laugh at this.  This is wha the locals use to cart around groceries instead of shopping trolleys.  This one was secured outside a supermarket with a bicycle chain.

Forgot to put this in before.  Dog sledding is tyring and the dogs were a lot fitter than I was.

Nearly forgot to put up the reason we went up north in the first place – The Northern Lights.  They weren’t this obvious to the naked eye, but even so, pretty cool to see them.  Damn, it was cold though.  The camera froze up, one set of batteries died and the head of the tripod froze solid!

Apart from the sea lions taking up all the available seats on the pier, this was our first glimpse of things to come.  These Frigate birds are the most graceful birds I have ever seen.  In the days to come, we would see them riding the wind currents all over the Galapagos, but they never failed to amaze.

They say that the Galapagos is the only place on earth that you can have a staring competition with the wildlife and lose.  This Red and Green marine iguana on Espanola Island proves the theory – even with the distraction of having a whopping big fly running around on its head.These marine iguanas are unique to Espanola Island.  They eat a particular type of red algae but they can’t digest the colouring, which accumulates in their skin.  They hang out on all the sea cliffs waiting to heat up enough to take a dip.  Some of them actually leap off the cliffs rather than making their way to the water’s edge.

I lost the staring competition with this Nazca Boobie chick as well.  When they get older, their eyes turn yellow.

I took so many photos of these Sally Lightfoot Crabs.  They’re everywhere.  They eat the algae off the rocks and just about anything else they can get a hold of (including each other!).  Everywhere you go, there’s these pink eyes staring at you from every nook and cranny.  They look pretty cool up against the black lava rock.

The Galapagos is overrun with sea lions.  They pretty much owned this beach.  We were walking amongst them on this beach and not one of them could be bothered budging (especially this spooning couple).  You had to step over them to get to the water in some places.

The Sally Lightfoot crabs were almost being knocked off their rock in the surf, but no matter how hard the waves crashed on them, they still kept staring at me whilst I took this photo.  Mind you, I nearly wrecked the camera to get this photo.

We were about to get in the zodiacs to go snorkelling in this bay off Floreana Island when this pair of Orcas came past hunting sea lions.  Can you imagine if we had got in the water just five minutes earlier wearing our black wet suits and fins!

This is the fish market on Santa Cruz Island.  The fishermen clean their catch and sell direct to the public, but it’s their helpers that really steal the show.  Every time we saw it, that big sea lion looked fatter and fatter.

We finally caught up with these big guys in the highlands of Santa Cruz Island.  Apparently they can weigh about 200kg and this big boy wasn’t moving for anyone.

Chez stalking the tortoise

These cactus trees are endemic to the Galapagos.

We went snorkelling at least once a day and on nearly every occasion, we ran into these green sea turtles. Every time we’ve seen these guys in the past (diving etc) it’s been such a thrill to get anywhere close to them.  On the Galapagos, we were suffering from green turtle overload. In some spots, we’d be swimming with maybe 15 of them. At one place, one of the guys in our group ran into three of them because he wasn’t watching where he was going. You can just make out Chez in the background – it doesn’t look like it because the turtle is so big, but she’s close enough to reach out and touch it

The Galapagos are a series of volcanos and this is the caldera of Sierra Negro volcano on Isabela Island.

They’ve got a stack of breeding centres for the tortoises on some of the islands.  You just wanted to stick one of these guys in your pocket and take it home!

We were just walking around on the beach when these blue footed boobies went into a feeding frenzy just past the breakers.  You can’t see it in this photo, but there’s a couple swimming in the middle of the melee.  Not the sort of thing you’d expect to start raining down on you when you’re taking a dip.

The western islands of the Galapagos are the newest and still look like a lava field.  Amazingly, there are fish swimming in some of the flooded sink holes and some other unlikely guests…

These Flamingos were among some of the unusual occupants of the lava fields.

Who’d think you’d find penguins at the equator.  We actually got to swim with these guys ..briefly.

All the cormorants in the Galapagos have lost their ability to fly because they have no predators on land.

We spent ages looking for spotted eagle rays and mantas in Mozambique and here they are just swimming around in a lagoon so close you could almost grab them from the zodiac.

This is a land iguana.  It’s a lot heavier than the marine version and also has a pointier face because it doesn’t have to eat algae off the rocks.  Adaptation…

Stand off on the walking trail.  We walked around!

Charles Darwin Lake

We got to this beach on Isabela Island before these marine iguanas had warmed up so you practically had to jump over them in spots to get past.

A face only a mother could love…

These cactus are endemic to the Galapagos.  They’re one of the first plants to show up on the lava field.

The sea lions are so inquisitive that we often ran into them whilst snorkelling

We found we could sneak up on some of the cormorants by snorkelling under water and then surfacing just in front of them, camera ready.  Unfortunately, the big one on the rock got a bit pissed off with me and made a charge for me shortly after I took this photo!  Notice Chez just off to the left.

Marine iguana taking a dip in a warm rock pool.  What a life.

The frigate birds would often use the updraft caused by our boat.  They would stay there without moving their wings for hours.

Galapagos Hawk

Bartolome Island

These Blue Footed Boobies were doing their mating dance.  Apparently, the higher the male lifts his feet, the sexier he is.  This guy was doing pretty well with the ladies.

This is how close we could get to the frigate birds.

Sharing the beach with the locals.

Roughing it on our first boat, the Anahi. Damn, it’s a hard life.  Just off to the right was the jacuzzi.

This guy was moving for nobody.

The Sea Lions in the Galapagos have so much food that they have a lot of spare time to just generally stuff around and live the good life.  One of their pass times is annoying the iguanas.  Marine iguanas can only stay in the water to feed for about 10 minutes before they get too cold and their muscles seize up.  If they’re in the water when that happens, they could drown.  The sea lions purposely grab their tails and try to stop them from getting back to shore.  This young sea lion is practicing his skills at annoying the iguanas.  When the first one gets away and he spots the next, he tries to hide but doesn’t realise that his butt is still sticking out of the water!  

This is just one of our encounters with the sea lions whilst snorkelling.

There were white tipped reef sharks in many of the places we snorkelled as well as hammerheads in places.  Apparently they don’t eat people!

Our first stop in France was Nice.  This is the beachfront, which is what most people would associate with the French Riviera.

At night, however, the action moves away from the sand and surf to the old part of town with it’s night clubs and restaurants.  I didn’t realise that Nice has an “old town” with the classic cobble stoned streets and close packed buildings, but there you go.  At midnight, the quiet back streets are transformed by the emergence of dozens of musicians, invariable decked out in black, who have just finished their sets and are on their way home or on to their next gig.  Pretty amazing to see.

We had planned on hiring some super sports bikes to ride the French Riviera, but it wasn’t to be.  You can see what we ended up with in the next photo.  A 50cc beast that we hammered all the way to Monte Carlo and back including a detour to to the hill top village of Eze.

We may have looked like “Dumb and Dumber” but it was a stack of fun!

We actually overtook this Ferrari.  Mind you, it was because it got stuck behind a bus, but it just goes to show that if you want to get around on the French Riviera, you’re better off saving the extra $425,000 and just buying a scooter instead of the super car.  Probably a little easier to get a hot date with the Ferrari, but what’s the point if you’re stuck behind a bus?

This is the sculpture outside the Monte Carlo Casino, and yes, we rode our hog around the round about amongst the Porsches, Aston Martins and Bentleys.

This is us indulging in Chuppa Chups at Monaco Palace. 

I couldn’t help myself.  This was the coolest car outside the Monte Carlo Casino.  

The Monaco Palace has some nice gardens surrounding it and we found this statue fascinating.  I think we need to get one for our place in Mudgee!

The harbour at Monaco.  The formula one track follows the harbour and the famous tunnel is sort of up to the far right.  We rode through it on our 50cc and with some imagination, it did sound a little like a McLaren F1 (sort of).

This is the village of Eze.  A stack of artists have come to live here and where there are artists, there are cafe’s and restaurants and, therefore, tourists.  Nice place though.  Apparently one of the restaurants here is on the “100 things to do before you die” list.  Unfortunately the dress code didn’t allow for hiking boots and helmet hair.

I tried to get a picture of the Eiffel Tower that was just a little different to the millions of other ones that you see.  Having said that, no matter how many times I saw it, it was always amazing.

This is one of the gargoyles on the top of Notre Dame.  You can just make out the Sacre Coeur in the background.  This is the same Gargoyle that featured on the cover of the original hunchback book.

Inside Notre Dame.  This is the scene that is depicted in the famous painting that shows Napoleon crowning Josephine.  

The interior of Sainte Chapelle.

Shopping on the Champ Elysees.  We needed something better than hiking pants to go to dinner at Tower 51 (at the Eiffel Tower)

I actually got Chez to try them.  To her credit, they all remained down!

The inside of Versailles Palace.  

Outside Versailles Palace, in the gardens.  Definitely the most unusual fountains we have seen.  Unfortunately, most of them were’t going when we were there so we went back the next day for a quick bike ride.  Unfortunately, they still weren’t going! Oh well, still pretty cool, even without the running water.

Breakfast on the streets of Paris.

Inside the Louvre.

No one really knows how La Tomatina started, but apparently it started in 1945 when a bunch of disgruntled youths staged a brawl in the main square, Plaza del Pueblo. There was a vegetable cart near by and of course tomatoes were the missile of choice. It didn’t take long before it became an annual event. Whatever the reason, the sleepy town of Bunol, population 9000, is descended upon by up to 50,000 tourists for one day in August every year for the world’s largest food fight. This is what happens…

50,000 people pack into a narrow street and square in the middle of town. The windows of the shops and houses along the street and square are covered in tarps. A pole is erected in the square and a ham is tied to the top. The pole is then covered in a thick layer of grease. People try to climb the pole to get the ham. When someone reaches the ham a cannon is fired and the dump trucks roll in, ten in total. The trucks are full of tomatoes. This is when all hell breaks loose as people start hurling tomatoes at each other. The only rule in this battle is that you have to squash the tomato before throwing it, which nobody really does. If no one gets the ham the cannon fires at around 11am. Once the cannon has fired the tomato throwing lasts for exactly one hour. Afterwards everyone heads for the nearest hose or river to wash off before hooking into the sangria (local alcoholic punch).

Mal, ready for battle

Some people just ask for trouble…

Dressed for the occasion

The prize

Nice and clean, in the square – before the fight (note the ham pole near the palm tree behind us)

Some crazy clown started a water fight

The first truck full of tomatoes

After the first truck

After the last truck

The scene after the cannon fires to signal the end of the fight

These guys came equipped with head protection

Discarded shoes – the streets were full of these and clothes after the battle

Mal enjoying a well-earned kebab and sangria after the fight

Cool buildings and sculptures

The Oceanografic Centre

Pit lane on the Formula 1 track, Valencia

The Colosseum

The Pantheon

St Peter’s (Vatican City)

Bocca Della Verita (Mouth of Truth)

A back street

A mime artist