Back packs and tango shoes

We went looking for a tango lesson. Our friend Mario had recommended the Argentine School of Tango run by Octavio, his friend, and located in the Gallerias Pacifica. We went looking for it. Galleria P is a shopping center in a spectacular old buiding occupying an entire city block in downtown. The Galleria is upscale to say the least. It makes Bellvue SQuare look like a strip mall. It has a four story cross shaped atrium roofed with glass in the center. We were intimidated. But Mario had shown us on a picture of the outside of the building where the school was located, so we set off without asking for information or directions (guess who´s idea that was). It was like wandering around inside a Rubic´s Cube. When we did ask for directions, about half an hour later, we were sent through an obscure door into a whole othe part of the structure, and indeed there was one small sign with an arrow for the school. It was like the entire building was divided on a diagonal from lower corner to opposite corner, and one part was the Galeria, and the other was the Borges Cultural Center. Soon we were following a narrow hallway that wound around the top floor through a rabbit warren of small offices. Eventually we came to a dance school, but it was for ballet.

More directions. Down a stairway, through more corridors, and then we are in the middle of the Argentine Inventor´s Exibition 2008. Fascinating stuff, all prototypes looking for investors we think, Everything from solar powered thermos bottles, to something that looked like a mix of a catamaran, a recumbant bicycle, and a kayak. But there in the middle of the exibition, was the entrance to the Argenitne School of Tango! We were in. It was right where Mario said it was. And we started joking with this guy at the desk about his black eye, and he turned out to be Octavio. He was welcoming and glad to see us. We took a lesson. It was so good, we came back the next day and took another. In ski terms, we can now get on the rope tow 50% of the time and come down the bunny hill in an unsteady and unpredictable snow plow. But we are inspired!

Coming next: Trial of bus ridership in a country with no coins and busses that only accept coins.....