10 November 2012 / leggypeggy

More Halloween silliness

Poor John and Sophia as wallflowers?

When you spend a lot of your time riding around in trucks, events such as birthdays and public holidays are a chance to bring out our creative and rowdy sides.

Halloween was a perfect opportunity for us to reel out of control. Our hostel in La Paz, Bolivia, was just around the corner from fancy-dress street and not far from alcohol street, so a Halloween plan was soon in place.

Everyone had to draw a ‘victim’s’ name from a hat, and then buy a costume for that person to wear on Halloween. Our spend limit was 50 Bolivianos, or about $7.

You don’t need to know details of the draw, except that I got Colin’s name. He’s our driver and he’s ginormous. I might be exaggerating, but I reckon he’s 6 foot 12—and fancy-dress street caters for the kiddies.

Spongebob goes shopping

In the end, I found the right mish-mash of ingredients— a generously-sized black cape, a golden party hat and a foam Sponge Bob. Now you might wonder why this was the perfect combo, until you remember that our truck is nicknamed Sponge Bob.

My challenge was to turn foamy Bob into wearable art. Luckily, I hoodwinked Colin into loaning me a shoelace, so I could turn Bob into ‘fashionable’ neckwear.

We resisted wearing our costumes as we crossed the border from Peru to Argentina, but we decked out for a trip through the shopping mall to buy groceries.

We donned them again when we went to town for a Halloween dinner at an Argentinian steak restaurant. We drew lots of stares, smiles, wolf whistles and laughs from all ages.

The next day we went back to behaving like grown-ups—sort of. Besides, our next party date was less than a week away—Guy Fawkes Day on 5 November.

P.S. Here are some pictures from the day. The four chickens are here. I came as the Giant Pumpkin.