And on

We spent a day in Salamanca with Maria Jose on our way out of La Alberca. She was amazing. Andrea met up with us in a hot pink number and three inch heels. She had forgotten all her English within two hours of leaving the exchange program.

Salamanca is beautiful. The buildings are all golden coloured thanks to a local stone that has been used for centuries in the construction of the city center. New projects in the city center must use the same stone. We walked around, admired the astronaut carved into the cathedral and had a great seafood meal at the Pulperia de Paco across from the train station that evening. The next day MJ took us to the bus station and we were off to Sevilla in the south.

Six hours and 400km later we reached Seville where legend has it that the city was created by Hercules. This is also home to Christopher Columbus´tomb. The monument is quite grand immediately inside the cathedral doors. The Santa Cruz neighbourhood with its windy streets was home to our hostel.

Seville is also home to some of the most famous bullfighters. We went to see the museum and then a bullfight one evening. The show was quite varied. It is a cruel sport and for some reason the fact that six bulls die during one evening escapes your mind when you buy a ticket. I think the woman sitting in front of me had no idea what she was getting herself into. She started crying and made her husband leave. There's quite a bit of ceremony that accompanies this event. People wait outside for the matadors to enter and then take their seats in the arena. There was lots of blood and not all of it spouting from the animals. It used to be that the horses involved in the event would get disembowled by the bull. In 1930 they started putting protective armour on the horses making it less gory.

Each matador fights two bulls. The fight begins with the matador on his knees in front of the bull gate. He shakes his muelta and the bull charges him. He then gets up and turns following the bull into the centre of the oval ring. One of the torreros (matador) danced with his bull and killed it without much bloodshed. For his skill he received an ear and the crowd got out their white hankerchiefs for their standing ovation. Hats were thrown into the arena which he picked up one by one and threw back into the stands amongst cries of "Ole". Excellent bullfighters receive either one ear, two ears or two ears and a tail (the top price). Their poses resemble those of ballerinas at times. Their shoulders are usually thrown back and their torsos stick out in a sharp curve. The look on their faces is of absolute intensity.

Among the objectives of the fight is to get very, very close to the bull. Having their blood wipe off on the torrero's clothing shows the crowd how close they get. However, the bull can't be danced around the muelta (the cloth held by the matador) too long because they soon figure out that their actual target is the guy holding it and not the cloth itself. The guy following the standing ovation wasn't so lucky. He got shanked and not just once but twice. He bounced off the horns the second time and the bull managed to turn him and tear through his arm. He was pissed and pushed his teammates off him. He finished his fight bleeding.