www.CostaRicaTicas.com

Merecumbe
What, pray tell, is that? I hear you ask. Well, it is a dance school which I now patronise every Tuesday and Wednesday. I thought it was about high time that I learnt this skill. The dance floors of Central American are alive with people twirling around all over the place and it seems a shame to miss out on the fun. So I enrolled here.

And it is pretty good fun. As seems usual with me, I am in the middle of the class in terms of ability (or lack thereof). We're mainly learning two dances at the moment: the merengue and the salsa. Initially, the meremgue is easier because the 2/4 timing is a little easier to master. Dance afficionados will know the salsa is a 4/4 timing, but has a stop in it. (1, 2, 3 stop!) and it a little difficult for me to get my head around it. Still, I'm getting there, slowly.

The classes are roughly mixed half and half blerks to ladies and they force partners to swap all the time. This has it's benefits (fancy Costa Rican girls) and drawbacks (forceful matriarchs demanding to lead the way) which leads me to the dance relationship. Now men apparently lead which, at times, feels a little bit like horse-riding in that subtle cues are required to lead the lady in the direction you want to go (sorry for the analogy girls). To me, this indicates that you have to know what your doing. Patently, I don't and so foot stamping, misdirections and lousy balance ensue.

The course is cheap - 12,500 colones for a month (about UKP13 pop pickers), which is about 8 or so lessons. The instructors know what they're doing. It is a shame I don't know what they are saying half the time though, so hopefully my Spanish might improve a bit too. All round, I think I'm onto a winner.

Adelante, dos, tres and, atras, dos tres, and...

Most of the spanish language schools offer free dance lessons in the afternoon after their regular classes. So that is yet another reason to consider signing up with one of them if learning to speak spanish were not already reason enough. ...

They nearly always have more women that stay for those classes than the do male partners, so they might not care even if they do figure out you're not enrolled for their language program. If anyone decides to try that, let me know how it works out

I was talking to someone recently about all the hot young female foreign students you often find at these schools and he was thinking about "crashing" the school at lunch time (when the classes break). He said the front gate guards normally let in any gringo who walks up (not really knowing if they're actually taking classes or not), the food is fairly cheap and not that bad and the scenery, well you know. The reason I mention it here is, if you have the balls to do that, it might also be possible to crash their free afternoon dance classes too. They nearly always have more women that stay for those classes than the do male partners, so they might not care even if they do figure out you're not enrolled for their language program. If anyone decides to try that, let me know how it works out

Off topic but a little related. As a poor K*D in Georgia I used to show up at a funeral -wedding reception hall dressed in a cheap suit and eat for free. I never got noticed.