Hard Partying in Paradise
Nov. 28, 2007— -- It's not the kind of place you'd want your teenage daughter to party at.
Two-and-a-half years after Natalee Holloway was last seen leaving the Aruban restaurant and nightclub Carlos 'N Charlie's, the island hot spot is still thriving, drawing capacity crowds of young people into a throbbing Bacchanalia of drinking, dancing and, in some cases, seemingly contagious sexual promiscuity.
"This place is on fire,'' Kevin Nisvet, 21, told an ABC News producer who visited the club last weekend at about 1 a.m., the approximate time Holloway was seen leaving the club with Joran van der Sloot and Satish and Deepak Kalpoe, the three men rearrested last week for suspicion of involvement in her May 2005 disappearance.
Van der Sloot has told ABC News that, after leaving the club, he, Holloway and the Kalpoe brothers went first to a lighthouse and later, to a secluded beach, where, he said, the pair became amorous. Van der Sloot claims he left a visibly intoxicated Holloway on that beach and went home. She hasn't been seen since, despite a massive search of the island and its surrounding waters.
On a recent night outside the club, a short line of young, animated patrons waited to pass through a metal detector and into the thick of a throng of young men and women, dancing enthusiastically to party rock classics — like AC/DC's "Back in Black,'' George Thorogood's thundering blues classic "Bad to the Bone '' and the 1982 Survivor hit, "Eye of the Tiger,'' the theme to the movie "Rocky III" — blasting from giant speakers at ear-splitting volume.
Nisvet, an island native, said that on weekends the club is "always full. ... It has girls, it has great music. It's the only club that has so much drinking and dancing."
Not surprisingly, the free-for-all atmosphere of hard drinking and pump-you-up rock anthems seemed to breed a remarkable degree of sexual abandon in some of the young customers.
Several young female revelers told ABC News that they are frequently groped by young men on the dance floor at the club.
Jessica Maren, 18, said she didn't like being groped but that she felt it was simply part of the enticing, sexually charged club experience.
"It's OK,'' she said with a shrug when she was asked if she resented the unsolicited hands on her body. "It doesn't really bother me."
Inside, in a corner of the bar beside a long wooden stage, two attractive blond women in tiny, skintight shorts, drew considerable attention as they gyrated to the music, arms around one another's necks, French kissing and swaying back and forth with the kind of abandon that the late hour, pulsating music and sexual energy can command. Close by, several men surrounded them, wide-eyed and clearly excited.
