At any point in the semester, you’ll find Pomona students are desperately itching to get out of Claremont. Every once in a while, people brave the traffic on the 10 Freeway and travel into L.A. Eventually though, you want to start moving on to bigger and better places.

One of the things that makes Southern California incredible is its proximity to a handful of major metropolitan areas: San Diego, Las Vegas and San Francisco are all within driving distance. And while all of those cities are interesting, they all are unfortunately under the jurisdiction of the federal drinking age laws. Yet, if you drive just 20 minutes past San Diego, you find yourself in sunny Mexico, where the drinking age is most definitely not 21.

Underage drinking, gorgeous weather, underage drinking, cheap food: what more could you want? I decided to plan a two-day trip in which I would show my friends the time of their lives.

We decided to skip the pharmaceuticals, prostitution and frat boys of Tijuana. Instead, we decided to go slightly further down to Rosarito Beach, which everyone assured us was fun and classy. My first tip-off that they were lying should have been when I went to our hotel’s website and a tinny version of Jimmy Buffet’s "Margaritaville" blared repeatedly from my computer. We reserved our room at the Rosarito Beach Hotel, for a mere $80 a night. With our room booked, we headed out on Thursday night.

After a three hour drive in which nobody could agree on a single CD, we parked at the San Diego Border Station parking lot. It’s only $6 a day, and from there you take the shuttle with the best name in the world: the Mexicoach.

After a $3, 45-minute ride through the empty back roads of Mexico, we finally arrived at Rosarito. Everything seemed auspicious enough, and we happily noted that all the bars were within walking distance of our hotel.

Since it’s a faux pas to arrive before 10:30 p.m. at any club in L.A., we stuck to that time frame in Mexico. We went into Carlos O’ Brien’s, one of the more popular bars there. It was a little weird that besides the bartender, there were only four other people there, but we thought that maybe Rosarito just didn’t start partying until later at night. A few over-priced drinks later, we went on to the next bar.

The local cantinas are by far the most economical places to go. Again, there were only two people there, but the 2-for-1 $1.50 drinks and the loud Spanish drinking music were hard to pass up. Nonetheless, we soon went in search of a more populated place.

Well, we were right. There were lines that wrapped around the block to get into the best club there, Papas and Beer. Finally, we had hit the jackpot. Everyone there was young, the music was great and we were prepared to wait in line to get in. Since we had nothing but time on our hands, we went and asked about the cover charge. "Cover? Everyone here won their tickets on the radio earlier. It’s a private party. There’s no way you can get in," he said. Dejected, we left.

We had taken just a few steps when a man approached us. "It’s pretty quiet tonight because everyone is at Papas and Beer," he helpfully volunteered. He volunteered to take us to a club that was just as good. Not realizing the sheer stupidity of following a stranger down a dark and deserted street, we followed him.

All our hopes were pinned on this club. It looked promising, with its lush tropical theme. As soon as we step foot inside though, we realized just how