Dude, I almost got gored by a bull! (*Mirar=to watch)

Yeah that´s right. How many of you can say that with a strait poker face....and not be lying? Not many I suspect, and I suppose that´s a good thing. If everybody almost got gored by a bull (like me, in a tale that I will tell in due time) the title of this entry would not sound all that exciting. Also the people who can actually say they HAVE been gored by a bull wouldn´t be able to say it with the same shanaz; so props to me, mega-props to the people who have been gored by a bull, and super-mega-props to the word ¨shanaz¨.

So this happened last Sunday. I went with a few friends to a little town about 45 minutes away from Riobamba (the city in which I am currently living) to ¨mirar los toros¨. Now what they do this time of year in the little towns around Riobamba is consruct fences about 8 feet high in a large square area. Now, everybody knows about bull fighting, however I did not go to a bull fight. As a friend told me, in a bull fight, people kill the bulls. But when you go to ¨mirar los toros¨ in little towns in Ecuador, it´s the other way around. What they do is release a bull in the arena everybody sits on the fence all around the perimeter and the young guys all jump down, sort of egg the bull on, and when the bull gets annoyed enough from the people silly enough to invade its personal space, which is quite a large area, it charges and trys to impale the culprit (who hopefully is running away by this point).

Now, I knew that I was probably never going to have another chance to do this again, so I figured ¨what the hay!¨ and after watching the other guys do it for a while, I hopped down to try my luck. In these events, they have in total about 8 or 9 bulls that they let in (one at a time and only one in the arena at a time). So I went in on the second bull and wasn´t directly charged at (although every time it moved in my general direction I ran like I was). After lasting quite a bit of time in the arena with a couple friends, I was getting a little tired of the constant threat of a brutal death, so I decided on staying for just one more bull.

Now, the the bull that came out after I decided on this was a total beast. Most of the bulls stop charging after people at least a couple yards before the fence, but this bull, whom I will henceforth refer to as Soul Masachist, would go right up to the fence and right from the start there were some close calls. I lasted a good five minutes with Soul Masachist without him coming near me, but soon after it was my turn.

Before I go any farther I need to tell you all that the fence that composed the perimeter of the arena was not the same height everwhere. In fact parts of the fence were only about five feet high. So you need to make an escape plan in your head beforehand to get to a part of the fence that is reasonably high and easy to climb. Now, this was my crucial mistake when Soul Masachist finally came for me. I of instinctively ran for the wall closest to me but I failed to make an escape plan beforehand to position myself near a high part of the fence! I however successfully scaled the fence before Soul Masachist was upon me but the part of the fense I was on was so low, I knew the threat of impalage (which is a word I doubt exists) was still emminent. I looked behind me for a split second to see if my persuer was still coming for me. To my dismay I saw that Soul Masachist was just a few feet away and showed no sign of stopping.

I had no choice. I had to jump.

And jump I did. Onto some bikes, sratching my leg pretty bad, but a well taken wound to what the alternative could have been.

So that´s my story of man conquering beast, or rather, man running away from beast and jumping onto some bikes just in the nick of time to not get gored and/or mauled. So that´s it for now. Take care, and don´t get gored!