Hey jiggle, jiggle,
Minnie and Daffy wiggled,
While the lion tried to eat the ass’ head.
The Arequipeños laughed
To see such a zoo
And the bull gave the cow a smackeroo!
El toro giving la tara a big kiss!
Halloween sure came early this year.
I’m proud to say that my adaptation of the nursery rhyme “Hey Diddle, Diddle” is 100% factually-based and inspired by Saturday’s costume party. We had all sorts of creatures: 2 asses (i.e. donkeys), a lion, a chicken, a pig, a bull, a cow, 2 mice (Mickey and Minnie), a duck (Daffy) and then 2 Incan royalties, a Roman gladiator, Zorro, a Super Creep, Miss AreCreepA, etc etc.
Most of the costume rental shops are in downtown Arequipa (Ave Siglio XX). They have an astonishing variety of costumes: from the above-mentioned animals (including gorillas, monkeys) to superhero characters to traditional Peruvian ethnic wear. Weibiao and I went as “Incan warrior royalties”. (It’s really an exaggeration of traditional Incan wear.) I had the most amazing headdress (replete with a real fish skull, jagged fish bones, fish scales, red and blue feathers and beads) and a dress with leopard preens and two skulls. WB was going to go as a mummy but decided on this Incan ceremonial garb that had one of the most elaborate embroidery that I’ve ever seen. Fashion came at a price though. The headgear was mad heavy, and I was paranoid the whole night about knocking into the chandelier in the house or stuffing my feathers into people’s faces while at the club.
Hello, my name is Xena.
Amazing detail on Weibiao's costume.
Things got pretty wacky at a certain point when we decided it would be fun to mix and match costumes. I never knew how hard all the walking stuffed animals/ cartoon characters at theme parks had it until I put on one of those animal heads. It was so hard to see and the silly head kept bobbing around my neck. As the night progressed, we started having lion-headed gladiators, dancing headless chickens, and an Incan Minnie.
Talk about cross-breeding!
Party animals in the volunteer house!
We went out to get takeaway Chifa (Chinese food) for dinner and befuddled quite a lot of the locals along the way. The Chifa hawkers very sincerely asked us if we were from the circus. Attracted even more attention when we went pub-crawling at Calle San Francisco. There was a lot of wolf-whistling, lip-smacking and shouts of ‘bonito!’ (pretty) and ‘muy bien!’ (very good). We were also let into (most) clubs instantly. Guess it’s not everyday that you have a whole zoo heating up your dance floor.
Having a good time with the locals (:
Much fun (: Dressing up should totally be a random affair and not something we only do on Halloween!
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