Sports Nutrition and the Mediterranean Diet / May 24th: Ronda day trip

Hanna and I woke up at 7:30 so we could get Café con Leche before our 9am but trip to Ronda. We met the group at the McDonalds by the train station. I was curious, so I looked around the McDonalds to compare it to the US, and wow, there a difference! The McDonalds has shelfs of beautiful pastries, macaroons and fresh oranges. They also have a small basketball room and a mini track for the kids to play in instead of a McDonalds play place. After exploring, we got on the bus and headed for Ronda! I’m really glad we got coffee because then I didn’t sleep on the bus and the drive to Ronda was beautiful! It took about 2 hours. This was 2 hours of beautiful olive orchards, sheep herds, and mountains. By the time we got to the town of Ronda, we were pretty high up in the mountains. We had a little bit of free time and then we met out tour guide. She asked Sean if the tour should be in English or Spanish. Her English was great, I understood every word! 

Plaza de Toros de Ronda

She gave us a tour of Plaza El Toros, home to the oldest bull ring in the world. It is still a functional bull ring with 3 bull fights a year. But on the typical day, it is used as a museum. The museum spans 1/4th of the circumference around the bullring. There are many paintings, cultural history of bullfighting and costumes of famous matadors. The tour guide showed us the chapel, Spain is a very catholic nation, and the matador is never certain if he will survive the bullfight, so there is a chapel in every ring. There is also 2 hospitals in every ring, one for humans if the matador is injured while fighting, and one for the bull if he shows great bravery and is granted a pardon and allowed to survive. Pardoning the bull means he gets to go out to pasture and live the rest of his life in peace. There has only ever been 2 bulls pardoned in all of the bullfights of Plaza El Toros, Ronda. Inside the museum, there were many red capes that had been used by matadors for the bull to charge at. Our tour guide told us that bulls can only see black and white so the famous color of the red cape is for spectators. The museum had bull heads mounted on the wall, some had one or both ears missing. The tour guide said you can tell if the bull and matador had put on a good fight by looking at the ears. If it was a good fight, the matador will take one ear as a trophy. If it was a great fight he will take 2 ears, and if it was an excellent fight, the matador will take both ears and the bulls tail. Next in the museum, were 2 very decorative cloaks that a traditional matador would wear. The beauty of the cloaks represented how matadors were a very high member of society, so high, that it was said that matadors and priests were on the same level of social class. After looking at some of the artwork of in the museum, we were permitted to enter the ring. It is customary to always enter the ring leading with your right foot so we were all careful to do so. Standing in the ring shook me a little bit. I could almost feel the emotion of all that has happened in there. But I will never forget what the tour guide said: “Bullfighting is not a sport, it is an art.” Sean added to this by explaining, to really understand bullfighting, you would have to study it for years. Kind of like how people who know nothing about art don’t appreciate Picasso, a tourist might just see a bullfight as the senseless killing of bulls, but to a Spaniard it is so much more. It’s a display of culture, it’s a dance, its art. After hearing this, I accepted that I am not in a position to understand bullfighting because I am not Spanish and didn’t grow up with the culture. I admire how Spaniards hold so much meaning in this practice. I am happy that bullfighting gives this nation so much passion. After all, the ring in itself is beautiful, the acoustics are so good in the center that the ring is often used for concerts. It has a 5,000 spectator capacity. When the ring was built, the town of Ronda only had a population of 8,000 people and bullfights were immensely popular. The bulls are imported from Cadiz or Sevilla and are extremely expensive because they are raised in an environment as close to nature as possible. They are given huge pastures with little human contact so that when they are put in the ring, they are as close to a wild bull as possible. The tour guide says that for the most part, the bull lives a perfect life. The only cruel part is the 20 minutes the bull is in the ring with the matador. In fact, if the matador cannot kill the bull within 20 minutes, they can go to jail. After heading out of the ring, we saw the little pens where the bulls are kept right before the fights, the doors are opened by a rope pulley system so that no bullring employees are injured when releasing the bulls. The pens reminded me of gladiator cells of at the colosseum. Our tour guide even said that parts of the Movie “Gladiator” was almost filmed here. There are also tiny doorways and stairways built so that a bull could not fit though, should an employee need to escape a bull. This concluded the bull ring part of our tour and I definitely feel like I know much more about the practice. I’m still not sure if I would be able to sit through an actual bullfight. Our Senor said that going to a bullfight is one of his favorite things to do, he had even brought 5 year old Raul. The keychain Senora gave us that holds our key to the apartment even has a little bull and matador on it. There is bulls and matador artwork all over Sevilla and Ronda. After this tour, we toured the rest of the town of Ronda. 

Puente Romano de Ronda

A huge valley divides the town into 2 parts: Old town and new town. Old town is made up of white buildings, rough cobblestone roads and contains the residential area of Ronda. New town is less than 500 years old contains the bullring. A huge, breathtaking stone bridge connects the 2 towns. In the center of the bridge is a room that used to serve as the Ronda jail. After the tour, Hanna, Brooke and I entered the jail, it was strange to see that the jail had such a magnificent view. We also paid 2.5 euros to climb down the steps towards the bottom of the valley under the bridge. There were some amazing views. We then had lunch at a restaurant overlooking the mountains and valleys. It was so peaceful. I had Gazpacho and olives. After lunch, we explored a cobblestone path that gave us a beautiful angle to see the whole bridge as well as a waterfall below it! I could not believe how stunning it was. We took many pictures of the scenery. After our hike, we headed back to the bullring where we met our group at 6pm and took our bus back to Sevilla. When we got home around 8, our family gone. We didn’t think anything of it. But we got a text that they at a party that went late and would send a pizza for us to the house! Spanish pizza tastes about the same as American pizza. I think I prefer Gazpacho! After eating Hanna and I walked to a fruit stand to buy orange for our bus to Granada tomorrow! When our family came home around 12, we showed senora some pictures form our day and she said they were beautiful! She said she had never been to Ronda, but Senor Raul has. I hope she makes it to Ronda someday, It’s truly a magnificent place!