Students hit the road for sun, fun and poker.

Byline: Lewis Taylor The Register-Guard

Alexander Ames has done spring break beach vacations and spring break ski vacations. He has been caught smuggling too many people into his hotel room in Sun Valley, Idaho, and dragged into a Mexican jail in Cabo San Lucas for being friends with a guy who kicked over a lamppost.

"I spoke just enough Spanish to get us out of that one," said Ames, 22.

This year, the University of Oregon senior and self-professed poker addict is taking a different kind of trip. He's heading to Las Vegas, a destination that offers gambling, free drinks, all-night entertainment and low-priced accommodations in gaudy themed hotels - in short, everything a college student could ever want.

"It's kind of our last hurrah," said Ames, who is allowing himself a $500 gambling allowance. "It's going to be a busy week."

While Las Vegas is not the top spring break locale for UO students, who start their vacation today, it certainly is a popular one. Mexico, Europe and Hawaii are among the most popular destinations, says Marjory Werstuk, branch manager of the Eugene office of STA Travel.

Closer to home, favorites include Seattle, San Francisco, Los Angeles and Vancouver, B.C.

"They are going up to Canada so they can be 19 years old and still have a pint of beer," said Donavan Pacholl, a UO graduate now in charge of business development for the online travel site StudentSpring Break.com.

"It's fairly affordable. You can get a decent hostel or guest house (room) for $10 to $25."

Nationally, Cancun and Acapulco are the top destinations for students, followed by well-worn beaches in South Padre Island, Texas, Daytona Beach, Fla., and Jamaica, Pacholl said.

Up until three years ago, Acapulco was considered a has-been - the kind of place where the likes of John Wayne and 1950s stars once vacationed.

This year, tourism officials expect 50,000 to 100,000 spring-breakers to descend on the Mexican Riviera locale.

Werstuk, the Eugene STA manager, hasn't booked too many trips to Acapulco, but she has sent plenty of students to Rosarito, Mexico. The resort town on the Baja Peninsula offers four-night quintuple occupancy "Basic Party Packages" starting at $129 per person.

"Everything was so booked up (this year)," Werstuk said. "About 80 percent of the schools had the same spring break."

Normally, spring break dates are more scattered, but this year's early Easter, which falls on March 27, led many schools to pick the same week, Werstuk said.

Students who didn't book plane tickets and hotel accommodations early were out of luck.

Another potential hurdle, a weak American dollar, wasn't discouraging students from heading abroad. London, Amsterdam, Frankfurt and Paris were all popular destinations, Werstuk said. The fact that it's still the off-season may have helped convince students that now was the time to travel to Europe.

Not everyone is going somewhere exotic. Angela Flocco, 19, a sophomore psychology major, was headed home to San Francisco, where she intended to see friends and "be lazy."

"I didn't want to spend money on a vacation," she explained. "I'd rather save it and go somewhere longer in the summer."

Sophomore Jessie Runyon planned to visit friends in Arizona. She says sun is the No. 1 driving force behind where college students spend their vacation. That and "college friendly" locales that don't discriminate against hard-partying students.

"College students are looking for places where they are definitely guaranteed a good time," Runyon said.

Dean Goodwin, national director of sales for the travel company Student Travel Services, says college travelers want vacation spots that offer a little bit of everything.

"They want warm weather, they want to go someplace where there is a great beach. They want to have water, they want to have sun, and they want to be able to enjoy an incredible amount of night life," he said. "And there has to be enough people to make it seem like an event."

Goodwin says the Las Vegas spring break phenomenon is difficult to track since many students who go there make their own travel and hotel arrangements.

His agency, which puts together trips for 25,000 to 35,000 college students annually, does not offer any travel packages to Las Vegas.

"In Las Vegas, the party is already there," Goodwin said. "There's not a lot that you have to do to make that happen."

Sarah Chan, 21, a junior business major who arranged a Las Vegas trip for herself and five friends, believes the city is a popular spring break spot partly because of the poker mania that has afflicted college campuses.

And for nonpoker players, she says there's always shopping, sunbathing and shows.

"It just seems like it's going to be fun," Chan said. "The glitz and glamour ... It just seems like an exciting town."

CAPTION(S):

UO students Chris Edwards (center) and Alexander Ames join their roommates in a game of poker Thursday before heading out Friday.