Bull Fight!

In your stareotype of latin american countries, there is bull fighting. As you likly know, bull fighting is a rigged sport were a guy (fancy smancy madador) with a long red cape and even longer sword becomes a celebrity for stabbing a large bovine to death after about ten piccadors have already stabbed it with smaller swords in the neck. They have those in Quito, too: once a year, in December. It is, however, currently September, and no such event is taking place.
Instead, the town of Tambillo (about 45 min by bus from Quito) was having their annual town party for the year. They have bull fighting too, of a very differant type. What they do is let the bull loose in a big soccer field with wooden fences and seating haphazerdly errected around it, and all the slightly drunk locals climb in to the arena and (unarmed) to have a run at the bull. Some are however prepared with large pink capes or ponchos of the like. This is defintely what would be called amatur bull fighting. Here, the bull has the all out advantage, because it is more likly to kill the people. In fact, we were told that usualy someone dies. Luckly, no one was mortaly wounded when we went Saturday (there was more on Sun. and Mon. too, so we don´t know if the whole event was death free).

Watching people risk their lives (we did see one person trampled, another get large gashes on his arm, another thrown, and several headbutted) for the thrill of running around after a rather upset bull, was an interesting enough event that we took lots of pictures. Here are some:

These people are waiting for the bull to come out.

You can see the field, and all the people on it. When the bull started charging, everyone would clamber up onto the wooden fence.
A guy riding the bull. He ended up with a rather bloody arm...

This bull got tired, and decided to go back to its pen.


And this one was hungry.
Look! Us! Including the other volunteers, as well as the family we went to the bull festival with (this was not a tourist atraction. In fact, our group definatly included the only gringos at the event.)