Bull Running in Quito

Hemingway wrote that an artistically good bullfight requires “good bullfighters and good bulls; artistic bullfighters and poor bulls do not make interesting fights….” He is right and I wrote a story about it, and it made me cry one single tear, and then I deleted it, and now you´ll never see it, and I can´t seem to write it again no matter how hard I try, and it´s really quite a sad loss.

Needless to say, bull fighting is pretty cool and pretty brutal. I couldn´t believe the things I saw on this day.

Pavlo and I took bets as to which bull fighter who be killed. Pavlo bet Yellow, I bet classic Red. Pavlo won in the first fight. The man was stabbed against the ground many times by the bull. It didn´t kill him - but in the spirit of the bet, I give the win to Pavlo. The man later stood up and killed the bull dishonorably. The third fighter was really quite magnificent and he taught us what the sport is about. The fifth fighter shall not be spoken of until I can re-write the story mentioned above. The last fighter was booed out of the arena.

The crowd was amazing.

At one point, a man ran onto the field with his own cape and tried to fight the bull. This man tried very hard to taunt the bull with his cape. Another man tried very hard to tackle him as he did this. A group of men tried to distract the bull. The bull tried to kill everybody. Eventually the man go pinned against the side of the arena with the bull in pursuit. He brought his cape up in defense, but a man grabbed him and held the cape down. This man was punched in the face promptly and the bull was avoided. The police came from behind and grabbed the man by the neck dragged him backwards over the arena wall. All very amusing.

This man has the unfortunate job of having to stab the bull
over-top his horns and using both hands at once. The bull is not
wounded when he faces it, and the man has no cape to aid him.

I felt this man was under-appreciated by all.