What started as a 750-kilometre pilgrimage for devout medieval Christians has become one of Europe's top long-distance hiking trails. The Camino de Santiago, also known as the Way of Saint James, traverses green northern Spain. It starts in the Pyrenees, winding its way through Pamplona,

The curve of a raised arm, the furrow of a brow, the dramatic strum of a guitar, a singer's lamenting wail and the sudden hush of a crowd - flamenco has come to represent all that is fiery and passionate about Spanish culture.

Flamenco fuses music, song and dance and oozes pure sex. Men in tight pants pace around brooding, castanet-clacking women dressed in frilly layered get-ups. Musicians egg the dancers on with syncopated hand claps, foot stomps and shouts of ''ole!''

With little more than a death wish, a spare pair of underwear and veins pumped with alcohol, hundreds of thousands of thrill-seekers descend on Pamplona in northern Spain every July for the Fiesta de San Fermin (Running of the Bulls).

Made famous by Ernest Hemingway in The Sun Also Rises and more recently by Billy Crystal in City Slickers, adrenalin hits don't come better than running through the streets while being pursued by a herd of angry, stampeding, 500-kilogram bulls.