Gringos in Bolivia

One of the things that I have enjoyed most about Bolivia so far is how uncommon it is to have people speak english to us. In fact, it generally seems that very few people come around this part of Santa Cruz who don´t speak Spanish as a first language. As a result of this, Janaki and I seem to be a constant source of entertainment as we stumble our way through the spanish necessary to get through day to day life here. People here also don´t seem to acknowledge us as tourists and few have even asked where we are visiting from...
There also seems to be a bit of a tendancy to clump everyone who doesn´t speak spanish as a first language into the category of Gringo (which I had previously thought mostly referred to Americans). For example, one of our taxi drivers told us that he had a brother-in-law from Belgium and then commented on how this relative was ´a gringo like you guys´.
Due to this experience so far, we had a bit of a shock today when we scouted out a ´backpackers hostel´ a few km from the City center. The place was newly renovated, air conditioned, had a swimming pool, a DVD collection, a pool table and was playing Coldplay in the communal areas. Most shocking to us, everyone in the hostel was speaking to eachother in English, and all of the signs in the hostel were in English. I think we actually had mild culture shock and decided we felt more at home in our quaint little room in El Hotel Aeronaútico (which has no english-speaking staff, and one english speaking guest that we have encountered so far) where we may not have an airconditioned room or a kitchen, but we feel as though we are having a more ´typical´ Santa Cruz de la Sierra experience.