Salsa at El Observatorio

We got up late the next day, just in time for lunch in fact. Today was corn tortillas and sour cream, yum!! We had planned to go back to the hostel tonight as Mau has uni tomorrow but his mum kindly said we could stay another night. After talking about various things, but primarily about where to go dancing that night, Mau took us out to go and look for a reasonably priced mosquito net as we hadnt been able to find one in America. We went to a shop that had them but they were still expensive so Mau rang his friend who led an expedition he went on (called Raleigh, it's a british organisation) who suggested we just buy the material and make one ourselves. Now being quite late we decided to leave this for the next day when me and Andy would have plenty of time to go looking round shops. We made a final stop to buy more meringues and ice cream before heading back to the house. It seems that Eton Mess is such a hit it has now become a family favourite and their new 'fancy international' dish!! So after dinner and more dessert we got ready to go salsa dancing..this involved teaching Mau some basic steps which he picked up pretty well, as well as me and Andy practising a bit as we havent danced in ages. We picked up some of Mau's friends on the way and got to the club called El Observatorio which has a live salsa band every monday night from 10-12.30 and is where all the local salseros/as go. We were surprised to see most of them dancing linear On1 rather than cuban, although there were one or two who only danced cumbia, but it still kind of worked. There were some very good dancers there and I watched as much as I danced...the locals tended to stay together but I did get some very good dances with the few who asked me. Andy said he had some great dances too and we both danced with Mau and his friends, I was pleased to see he'd remembered most of what we'd taught him although his friends thought it was odd as they tend to dance the cumbia style. When the band finished a guy called Siv came over and chatted to us for a bit, we'd been just been dancing bachata and he wanted to know if it was Dominican (yay we must be doing something right!) and where we learnt it. He said that he'd been talking to the other locals who said we were good dancers and thought Andy was cuban because of some moves he did! We also found out from him that Costa Rica has 3 congresses a year...just waiting to find out when they are as its possible we could fly back if there's one in May. We left happy after a great evening and when we got back collapsed into bed, exhausted (we're so unfit lol!).