yes, people!  it's that time of year again in Buñol, Spain...La Tomatina!!!

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this annual tomato flinging fest supposedly started in the 1940's, when two carnival spectators got into a fight.  nearby, a crowd of people rushed a vegetable stall and started throwing the roma beauties at each other.  the following year, some kids showed up in the same spot, but armed with their own arsenal of tomatoes.  it was eventually broken up by the police and subsequently banned until 1959, when La Tomatina was given official recognition.

so every last wednesday of august, up to 30,000 people partake in this crazy tradition...which is supplied with 120 TONS (that's 240,000 lbs. of lycopene charged fruit, kiddies!) of tomatoes!  this is one thing i gotta do before i die!

once, in 1992, i was part of something similar to this in San Jose, Costa Rica.  well, i was an innocent bystander... ya see, i was strolling the fruit stands in the central market when the police swept in to check on permits.  i guess you gotta have a permit to sell fruit in Costa Rica!

there must've been dozens of renegade fruit sellers because all those fruit cops were suddenly pelted with everything (bananas, apples, guava, passion fruit, zapotes, mangoes, oranges)...for a good two minutes!  luckily, i had ducked into a doorway and watched the massacre until their backups arrived and restored order.  i will NEVER forget the sight nor smell of this fruit fracas.  in fact, i still can't drink guava juice to this day without smelling that heady stench of smashed fruit in that street...fourteen years later!  i guess it's a good thing that no one threw watermelons, pineapples, or papaya (not the hawaiian kind...but the central american kind...we're talking as big as a box of kleenex!) - that would've been ug-lee!