8am             Everyone walks down towards the town center.

Me and a mate get in a bit of trouble hitching by our fingernails on the back of a slow moving truck which promptly sped up to 80 km/h. Eventually managed to jump free and it put us ahead of most of the 30 000 strong crowd, so we were in a prime position for the whole day.

9am            Someone ties a big ham at the top of a greasy pole and guys scramble over each other to try and knock it down. If you look carefully you can see it to the right of those trees. Everyone sings ole, ole, ole and jumps up and down occasionally, but if someone gets close to the ham, people in the apartments nearby will throw buckets of water over the person to distract them.

10:30am          A firecracker goes off and the first of the tomato trucks roll out! Anyone can climb on board, but instead I was behind the very first truck when it opened and dumped tomatoes all over me! From then on its just an hour and a half of a complete tomato frenzy and after the tomatoes turn to smush, people go back to using the t-shirts as projectiles. At times the streets are knee deep in a river of tomato mash.

12:30pm          The second cracker goes off and everyone stops. I was exhausted and a bit grateful, cause I had picked a mini battle going on with a whole section of crowd and they were kicking my butt! Even so, everyone is mates again afterwards and even the locals come out to help by hosing everyone down.