I was in Colombia, I had to do it; I had never danced in my life and I also felt like I had two right legs; Bogotá was a city with a cold climate, I hadn’t imagined this before coming. After tossing and turning in my private room at The Cranky croc hostel, I decided; I went down to reception, looked to see if the list of activities was still there and signed up.

—The experience starts at 7pm —said Robert, the guy at reception.

There were still 20 minutes left, so I ordered a craft beer from Original without the bar and waited. After a while the teacher arrived, who greeted everyone saying that she was Gabriela and that today she would be our salsa teacher and added:

—Guys, salsa is the way we Colombians have to dance about our difficulties and thus overcome them; it is not an easy life in Colombia, but even so we dance as if there were no tomorrow.

—You don’t have to be the best, but you have to dance; So join in without fear, you’re sure to have a good time.

About five of us joined in; I was nervous but determined. The class started with some basic steps; something to shake up the body and get us in the mood; the idea was to follow the count 1,2,3 and 5,6,7 one leg had to move in the opposite direction to the other one at a time and so we continued little by little, step by step from one movement to another with the teacher guiding us, taking us almost like children learning to walk; this was more than a salsa class in Bogotá it was an experience of Colombia a way in which we were connecting more and more to the culture and feeling of the Colombian; the teacher slowly enveloped us in the instructions of the steps and the stories of the Colombian culture and its connection with salsa; after about 40 minutes one of my two right legs had finally been transformed almost magically by Gabriela’s spells into a left leg and amazingly I, a 30-year-old man from northern Germany, was dancing.

After an hour or so we had finished class; I approached the teacher and asked her:

—Gabi, do you think that if I go tonight to Goce Pagano, the place to dance salsa that you recommended to us, but I don’t speak Spanish, it will be bad?

—You already speak the best language; the language of ballet and this is much more important than speaking Spanish here in Colombia! —said Gabriela.

By Fredy Calderón.