Alvarito's, that is the name of the "sports bar" we had the taxi driver take us to from the Gran Hotel Delicias. Andre and Wes had been there the night before, before Patrick and I made it to Maracaibo. They charged us a $5 cover and gave us drink tickets for something like five drinks. The place was a second story open area with a roof. There were six of us, me, Patrick, Dante, Bryan, Wes, and Andre. We ordered a bucket of beers on ice.

Dante and Bryan walked off somewhere, and it wasn't long until Dante came back and moved us closer to an area where there were some nice Venezuelans and Bryan was dancing with some of them. Dante was sort of watching out for everyone and making sure we had plenty of beer.

Some young chick, who later introduced herself to me as "Diana" (dee-AH-na in Spanish), took a liking to Bryan and was dancing with him. Next thing I know, she's all over him and kissing and giving him cigarettes even though he doesn't smoke. He seemed to be having a good time, but the dude is married.

Anyway, at some point we decided to go to a club somewhere, and we all crammed into taxis. We got out at this small, nice looking place with a line outside the door. Somehow we went to the front of the line and the chicks told the bouncer to let us in. There were four or five chicks now. I think there were three at Alvarito's, but we picked up some more somewhere. The bouncer guy had a crazy look on his face and he was frisking us as we went in. He grabbed my belt on both sides and lifted it up, almost giving me a wedgie in the process. WTF?

Inside, some chick whose name I don't remember started leading me around and dancing with me and stuff. I saw one had taken to Wes too. It was weird. She would lead me to the bar to buy beers and then we'd dance more. I started to get the feeling it was some sort of a setup. At one point I saw her pouring someone else's beer into my cup when she thought I wasn't looking.

It just didn't seem like things were going in the right direction, so I leaned over to Bryan and said, "I think we need to get out of here." He snapped out of it and we walked outside to discuss. I told him I thought the women were either prostitutes or they were trying to scam us. Dante came out and he wasn't so sure. Then the chicks came out and tried to get us to come back, and after talking to them in Spanish for a few minutes Dante told us he thought they were prostitutes. So Bryan and I got in a taxi back to the hotel.

After another hour or so, the rest of the group showed up at the hotel. I think they had more or less the same experience as Bryan and me. It must have been somewhere around 3 or 4 AM.

We had crammed another mattress and some couch cushions on the floor so everyone had a place to sleep, but the six of us spent most of the remainder of the night talking. Bryan and Dante had to get up around 6 AM for a flight to the next city, Merida. I think I slept about three hours that night and got up around 8:30.