14.11.10 Bullfight in Socabaya

On Sunday, 14.11.10 I caught up with 9 students and 2 teachers from the Spanish School EDEAC in Arequipa. Through our host families we found out that there was a bullfight in the neighbour town Socabaya. First we thought that it is the Spanish-style bullfighting where the matadors or toreros (bullfighters) are trying to kill the bulls and therefore a few of the students refused to go. But as soon we found out that it is only a fight in-between two "toros" and that it isn't bloody at all we all got very excited.

So we met in front of the Cathedral on Sunday morning from where we caught three taxis to the bullfighting arena at Socabaya. The bullfights were supposed to start at 1pm but as usual in PERU everything starts about an hour later. At around 2pm when the arena started to fill up with local "cowboys" and their families the first two bulls where dragged into the arenas by their owners.

The first 5 bullfights were with "lightweight" bulls about 500kg. Well, when I saw the first two bulls they seemed massive to me. All the bulls had really funny names e.g. Mr. Piggy or King Kong and when they were fighting against each other the audience were shouting their names to boost them up and the atmosphere was rising with every upcoming bullfight.

At about 3pm the arena was filled up with Peruvians and we were the only "white people" amongst them. For sure everyone was looking at us as we were the only people who were wearing shorts or skirts. During my 4 weeks in Arequipa I noticed that Peruvians don't were shorts or skirts at all even though the weather was always warm (22 degrees)!

However our teachers managed to get us on the "VIP stage" from where we had a fantastic view and we felt pretty special. The first bullfight was actually quite boring as it took 25 minutes and no one of the bulls really wanted to fight so the judges called it off. But the following one's got more and more interesting as the bulls got bigger and bigger. I found it quite amazing that the bulls actually didn't bother having their owners around and neither loads of judges and other brave people. The only thing they seemed to be interested in was the other bull ….AND they only fought "head against head" until one gave up because of exhaustion. Check out my photos in my album "Bullfight in Socabaya"!

Even though that I managed to get some really good shots from the stage I wanted to walk over to the other side of the stage where I had the sun in my back. While I was walking over to the other side the bulls suddenly broke through the fence and I as quickly as I could I ran behind a bunch of local cowboys where I felt save. The Chico's looked at me as I would come from the moon so I started chatting to them in Spanish. Soon they started to offer me an "Arequipian cerveza" (local beer) which I happily accepted as I was quite thirsty. The guys who were all wearing a "sombrero" were telling me that they were cousins and go to every bullfight around Arequipa….and for sure in order to bet and hopefully win some money!!

I told them that I was with a big group of European's and a few "bonita chicas" over at the other side. So I invited them to join us. First they were quite shy but I just dragged Manuel with me and soon the others just followed.

When I introduced them to the whole group they offered us a couple of beers and after a while we were wearing their "sombreros" and took a few photos with them. The guys were really friendly and told us a lot about the different types of bullfights and how the betting works. Just before we were about to leave Manuel and his brother invited us to go horse-riding on their farm. So we took their mobile number and agreed to come down on the following Sunday.