Although I didn’t like my first hotel at all, the Atlantic Beach hotel, I had some great fun on my first night. The hotel had a bar, which turned out to be the gay meeting point of Condado, sometimes referred to as the Miami South Beach of Puerto Rico. I spent some time in the bar, drinking the local beer Medalla Light for 3 dollars per beer (happy hour). By the way: they don’t have regular Medalla, they only produce the Light one. It’s better than Heineken, but hey, only slightly. Anyways, I had some fun watching the crowd of the bar. There were some loud American friends making a fool of themselves by being loud Americans. They must have been 45 or so, but they acted like college kids. I don’t know if they were gay or not, they could have been just four office managers gone wild, but they sucked. And they stayed on my floor! Then there were a few couples watching the constructions sites, in between witch our ‘hotel’ was located. There were also a few attractive locals walking in, but my guess was that they were rent boys, who weren’t really successful in their pursuits.
An older American who was on a business trip started talking to me and offered me a drink. I guess I’m becoming as gay as you, Piet, accepting drinks from older guys knowing very well that they don’t make a chance at all, but hey, I ran out of money and I was thirsty. The guy ended up being a very interesting lawyer from Chicago who worked for the same law firm where presidential candidate (and my personal favourite) Barack Obama met his wife at during an internship. Yeah, I had interesting conversations with that guy and he needed a drinking partner too. I ended up convincing him to go to this club where they played reggaeton. I had asked some guy at the bookstore where I had to go for a reggaeton night and he warned me about the straight reggaeton places. Apparently, I wouldn’t get out alive as a gringo looking reggaeton lover. So, he suggested Club Eros, a metrosexual (read: predominantly gay) club which had a latin night on Wednesday. I absolutely loved the place!
The club was a ten minute walk from the hotel, but was located in a more seedy area of course. I had no trouble walking there with that guy, although he was very scared and I would have been scared too if I had walked up there on my own. However, no mugging and no harassing whatsoever. Unlike other tourists who wrote their stories on the internet. They served Coors light at the club (a beer from Colorado, only available in light version) and that’s what we continued drinking. The place looked very cool. It would be very successful in Brussels or Antwerp. And I loved the fact that they played reggaeton. I danced a lot and watched the locals move their asses and hips as if they auditioned for a part in an urban video clip. I realised that the only thing that separates reggaeton from sex are clothes. And yes, Puerto Ricans are beautiful! Definitely, the second best looking people on this planet!
I didn’t know much about reggaeton. It’s been around for a while, but it only recently started to be mainstream. It’s basically latin gangsta rap with a very typical sound that you either like or not. It’s like drum ‘n bass. Every song sort of sounds the same, but not quite. The bass is very important and the attitude even more. Unfortunately it’s the music of the drug dealers and the criminals and the lyrics are really nasty and aggressive, but I just love those beats. However, I heard nothing but reggaeton. On the radio, on tv, out of boom cars passing by in the street… I’ve heard enough of it for the rest of the month. Examples: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JWQUPak5S-g / (the most famous duo) http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xrA4ERbxxF0 / (yeah, they have child stars too)
Apart from reggaeton, there’s other latin music too, but I didn’t really hear it that much. Ricky Martin has an unplugged cd and I heard some nice version of some terrible songs. He’s still big there. And of course you have meringue and cumbia and salsa and stuff. There’s a lot of music everywhere you go and that’s what makes travelling so cool.
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