The 3 Mouseketeers

Blind Mouse
3 Blind Mice
Yerba Loca Hike
Hiking along the river
Eating some lunch

The only thing scary about this Halloween weekend was how few people appreciated how awesome my costume was. Chile doesn’t really “do” Halloween. They do, however, get Monday off. Mainly because Chile will use literally any excuse to have a Monday off. They started celebrating Halloween just a very short while ago, so it has yet to reach its full potential. There are no haunted houses, and dressing up is just for kids and North Americans who still think they are in a sorority or fraternity. Even though we all knew this to be true, my friends and I celebrated Halloween the only way we know how: with beer and without inhibitions. Thank god for “California Cantina”, Santiago’s gringo bar, and therefore designated Halloween mecca. Jackie, Carly, and I decided to sport group costumes this year. The best part about our costumes? They cost us under a dollar. Friday morning, we ventured to Estacion Central (home of the worlds largest collection of junk you don’t need). After roaming the street designated to party stores, we finally found what we had been searching for….plastic mouse ears. Throw on some shades, black spandex, and eyeliner and whala! 3 Blind Mice! Too bad that Chileans have absolutely never heard this nursery rhyme. The closest thing I got to someone “getting” my costume was “from Shrek?!” Yes. We decided to dress up as characters from Shrek that are in the movie for under 10 seconds…This reaction was far better than the “OMG 3 Minnie Mouses!!!!” that we got on more than one occasion (this was at the American bar by the way). I even remember being photographed with 2 actual Minnie Mouses because “OMG we are all Minnie Mouse!!!!!” Lets just do a quick review of famous mice. Minnie Mouse wears a dress. She is not blind. She also wears a bow. And she’s lame. Not to mention that there is only one of her. Either way, I thought our costumes were pretty clever and Halloween was an overall success.

During the actual day of Halloween, before la fiesta, Carly, Fro, Nico (aka Nico Suave and/or Mogly) and his friend Marsal, went hiking through Yerba Loca (a park 40 minutes outside Santiago.) Before going on the hike all I knew was that it was about 10 miles and for the most part it was flat. Unlucky for Carly, both of these statements were 100% false. It was actually 20 miles in total, and Nico played it pretty fast and loose with the word “flat.” Carly was working with about 4 hours of sleep and gets motion sickness like nothing I’ve ever seen. About ½ way up the mountain, Carly looks at me with the saddest eyes I ever seen and says “I just want to throw up but I can’t.” Good thing for her, making people puke is a specialty of mine (Mom, if you are reading this out loud to Dad you can go ahead and insert something about my face making you throw up here.) I find that if I just pretend to vomit really loudly around people that already feel sick, I can immediately induce a throw-up response. So there we were on the side of the mountain both pretending to throw up until Carly actually did. Not 1 but 3 times. I’m telling you …I’m a pro. Too bad that once someone actually throws up it makes me sick. There was one point where Nico Suave, Carly, and I were all going back and forth dry heaving. Good stuff. I couldn’t think of a better way to start a 20-mile hike…except maybe getting your shoes soaking wet 2 minutes in. Check. Oh well. Its not like we lost the boys, got off track and hiked through a swamp full of cow crap instead of taking the dry, practically paved (or at the very least, cow crap free) path or anything…. It was well worth the pain though. The hike was incredible.