Lamest. Night. Ever.

First, let me preface this story by saying that everyone, and I mean everyone, kept telling me how much fun I was going to have going out in Santa Cruz. Of course, it was going to take some killer night-life to live up to the hype. But that's not exactly what I got.

I went out around 12:30. Generally, Santa Cruz is pretty dispersed - most of it has come about since the 1960's, so it's more car-oriented than a lot of other Bolivian cities. So it's not walkable, and there aren't really little pockets of stuff like restaurants and bars, like in Cochabamba. So I took a cab to an area that was supposed to have a fairly heavy concentration of clubs, but when I got there, nothing was open. Instead what I found was a bunch of kids showing off their sound systems and drinking in the street. It was funny, too, because it was sort of a sound-off between rap like Tupac and reggaeton on one side, and traditional pena music on the other. Basically, it was a musical train wreck.

So I bought some beer and was wandering around drinking, and then I got yelled at for wandering too far off the main drag. You see, there were 8 or so clubs in three blocks, but then on each end of those blocks was a church and a school (but between them is OK). And you can't have open containers near those, I guess. Interesting choice of locations for the clubs.

A security guard told me that the clubs would be opening at two, so I wandered around, watching guys with tricked-out cars try and convince the few girls around that their dick was bigger than the other guy's with the tricked out car; homeless guys either passed out in front of car dealers or collecting bottles after the drunken youth (a stark image of Bolivia's disparity); and girls with coolers selling cans to passing motorists.

There was a prominent billboard with a goldpanner shaking out his nuggets into a camel design; "discover more," the advertisement urged. Discover what? I wondered. What will I discover by smoking Camels? I guess the company is hoping consumers will think the answer is "gold" and not "lung cancer."

To kill time, I wandered into a super-fancy hotel just down the street, trying to convince them I was a wealthy industrialist and that they should show me around. They were nice enough to give me a brochure before they ussured me out, at least.

Next, I thought I might try my hand at slots - there was a little casino in the area (also OK, as long as it's between and not adjacent to the church or school) - even though slots are the most mundane and boring form of gambling - or so I thought. When I went inside, what I found was bank after bank of electronic bingo machines. Bingo is boring enough in real life (I've played once), let alone with no friends to bullshit with and only your lonely desperation for company (and not even free booze, like real casinos). I didn't bother (I wasn't that lonely and desperate YET).

2am rolls around, and nothing opens. I ask a couple more security guards, who say nothing is open tonight, although they wouldn't really explain why. So I got in a cab and asked him to take me to an open club with people. Which he did; the club we went to had traffic parked for blocks, and fancy wheels, too: Jags and Mercedes, stuff like that. I guess what I didn't specify was that I wanted to go someplace that I could get into - the fucker took me to a private club. I started chatting with a guy outside, and when he went in he tried to convince the bouncers to let me in with him (he was a member), but the bouncer just looked me up and down and said "no." At least by now I was near my hotel, and since it was 3:30 by this point, I headed back to enjoy my air conditioning and curse myself for drinking a redbull (thinking I'd be drinking all night) and thinking that maybe some electronic bingo sounded like a good time.

Like I said, pretty much the lamest night ever.