Homicide in the bull ring

Today should've have been a day of productivity and discovery.

Thanks to la banque postale I'll have to test my fluency in french curse words as they have spelt my name wrong on half of the correspondance I receive...yes. only 1/2.

Something only this bank can achieve it seems.

But of course, the banking managers were not there today (why would they bother to come in to clean up the mess of their colleagues?..so what if it is a Saturday !! )

So steffy and I with lots of time to waste before our trip to Bouillarges to see los toros in action decided to take a little promenade and lunch in the town centre. We stumbled across an olive oil convention (seriously) which held the same pomp and atmosphere of a graduation ceremony. This was beyond amusing.

Lunch, catered by Paul, was fabulous. But i think I'm getting tired of the tomate/mozza sandwich on olive bread (cue death curdling scream). Hopefully I can jump back on my path of healthy living and salads soon as I've run up too many hills in Trinidad to get back chunky :s

So after what looks like my last sandwich from Paul *tear* we took the J in the direction of Bouillarges.

So we get there...and my question is...why bother give these two cross streets a name ? Just call it Nime ext or Nime Trace or something! The circumference of the town is walkable in 10 minutes !! Needless to say we had 2 hours to spare. So in those 2 hours we managed to see a wedding procession to the town hall, listened to the bull fighting musicians warm up and just had random conversation about any and everything like only girls can do :)

So ! Finally! It's 4pm and we head over to 'the arenes', its small but say what we've come to see some toros !

Well...not exactly.

Apparently, unbeknownst to us, we came to see the sacrifice of these poor beasts. How is it that we didn't know that the point of this was to kill the bull ??? If I knew before I sure wasn't going to go ! I almost blew chunks in the area. I felt ( and still feel at the time of writing this) sick in the stomach as the animals realised they were dying and were fighting for their lives.

We lasted 3 fights. Only because there was no bus till the end of the 3rd fight :/

That was absolute torture. I dont mind the show and artistry itself;  The showmanship is absolutely amazing: The tilt of the hips, the pointed toe. The overexaggerated posture and the ruffle of the shoulders. The nod of the chin and the timbre of the shouts. It all speaks bullfighter.

It is exemplary and beautiful to watch.

But to see and experience an animal struggle to live, and trust me, 2 bulls did exactly that; they just didn't want to die. To watch these animals drag themselves on their knees , stumble, struggle, fall and get up and try to make an escape was really sickening.

If I ever attend a bull fight in the future, I'll have to make sure that its one where they do not kill the bulls and just simply put them out to pasture after they get tired.

But ! I'm all one for experiences and this is one for the record books.

So as usual, pictures attached :)