Have you ever been in a bar or club and said, “Man, I wish this place was on wheels?” No? Well, let’s pretend that you have, because mobile nightclubs do exist. They’re called chivas. Hop on!

Typically found in Colombia and Ecuador (and more recently in New York!), chivas resemble open-sided school buses, brightly painted (often in patriotic yellow, blue and red), with rows of wooden bench seating inside; a ladder on the back leads to rooftop seating and storage. In rural areas, chivas are a popular way of transporting people and their belongings (chickens, pets, and fruits and vegetables) between villages.

The use of chivas has grown from being a mode of public transportation to a unique way of touring cities and the countryside. Chivas ferry tourists around on guided city tours in Colombian and Ecuadorian cities like Cali, Barranquilla, and Guayaquil (which has open-top versions of the traditional chiva).

If you’re looking to combine partying with a little sightseeing, or just feel like livening up your drinking, climb on a party chiva. These traveling discos cruise the streets serving alcohol, usually aguardiente (anise-flavored alcohol made from sugar cane), to you and up to 40 of your soon-to-be best chiva friends, while a rooftop brass band blasts Vallenato or oom-pah music. Chivatecas up the nightclub aesthetic: raising the roof and ditching the seating. Get tight at the open bar and dance to a mix of salsa, cumbia, reggaeton and electronica. You can chiva-hop from bar to bar or roam the streets for a couple hours before getting dropped off and left to stagger into a nightclub.

photo by L.Marcio_Ramalho

In Colombia, nighttime rumba rides are a great way to cover the many neighborhoods in Bogotá, Cartagena, and Medellín. In Quito, trumpets, drums and cymbals raise hell atop chivas crawling through the city’s nightlife district, La Mariscal, on their way to the old town for canelazo-blurred views of the churches and plazas. If you’re in Baños, you can ride a chiva at night up to the Bellavista viewpoint to enjoy a cup of canelazo while taking in a fire show and erupting volcano Tungurahua (so long as it isn’t obscured by clouds). Chiva activity peaks in Ecuador in December during the Fiestas de Quito, when chivas clog the streets and everyone wants in on the fun.

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This entry was posted on Thursday, November 12th, 2009 at 2:41 pm and is filed under Nightlife. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.