Answer (specifically for women): It depends on what style you want to learn. The following is my view of the salsa scene in Montreal, don’t take it as the truth.

The more well-known styles that are danced in clubs are Cuban (more improvised and with more displacement) and New York (more codified/choreographed and little displacement) aside from L.A. (lots of dips and lifts), Puerto Rican (like New York but supposedly different, not sure how) and Colombian (few turns and more like cumbia) styles. It’s kinda hard to find a good Cuban style teacher. You can try Odalys Pantoja’s Ritmo Picante, she actually also knows the New York style quite well I believe.

New York style teachers are plenty because it is popular (unfortunately - I like the Cuban style best). Tomas (Tomas Dance, see the URL below) is a good salsa teacher and perhaps he can teach the Cuban style as well. There’s also Monte Christo and Caroline Pare’s school, both heavily into the New York style. But Caroline Pare also does some Cuban style teaching I think. Arthur Murray’s school on Jean Talon is more oriented towards ballroom which can be a little stiff but at least you learn to have a good posture.

I am sure there’s lots more but I don’t keep track of it so much. It’s always good to try different things so as to stimulate development of your own style and not get obsessed with any style/school in particular See Salsapower for a few addresses etc. and/or Google around a little bit.

PS my advice for any woman/girl/follower wanting to learn and be able to join the dancing in a salsa club (not aiming for competitions etc.), is to go to dance class as little as possible but to listen to the music and practice the basic steps until you can dream them or until you can clap the clave rhythm while doing the basic steps (and/or sing the song). Then when partnering, keep a good posture/balance and make sure you really use your right hand to follow the guy/leader by putting your weight behind it, and above all try to dance only with guys/leaders that give you the impression they know what they are doing.

The more you go to classes the more you might start leading and anticipating and the less you learn how to follow which is the essential thing to learn for women/girls/followers (in a club dance setting). This happens because teaching how to follow is usually done while the teachers shows some move/turn which is useful for the guy/leader to learn but it’s irrelevant what the precise move is for the women/girls/followers except for some of the more complicated moves especially dips and lifts. And as long as the follower knows how to follow and the leader knows how to lead … The difficulty for the follower is to learn what to do without knowing it in advance.

Here’s some St. Laurent traffic going north (and St. Laurent traffic going south). Here’s a Belvedere view, Parc Mont Royal view and onto the Plateau view.

Buenos Aires (BsAs)

This city, or should I say “metropole”, has lots of grandeur, very-very wide streets and a huge urban sprawl. While I was there, I had incredibly nice weather. Blue skies, mostly dry and sometimes too hot actually. Everyone knows this place from it’s tango, so I went to Chiquin to see a good show:

The San Telmo district is one big antique store, and that includes the street performers. But seriously, what a collection they have there.

San Jose

Just like Panama, a messy place.

San Jose is in a valley. There are pockets of new developments embedded in an overall mostly low-class urban sprawl. These new developments are not native, but mostly imported (American, European, .. ) and feel rather unnatural to me.

Temperature-wise, San Jose is actually cold in winter time, ie. november-march (something like 15 degrees Celsius is nothing uncommon for instance during the night and it has reportedly gone down as far as 5 degrees Celsius), especially if you’re staying higher up in the hills. The clouds can easily cover the top of the hills. But then people tell me that it’s actually colder in the summer (not sure I got this right) ! So you really wanna be at the beach or down in the valley or have airco/heating.

Where to stay ?

To find a place to stay I drove around San Jose, Escazu, Santa Ana and Heredia. It’s pretty hard to get a grasp of the map because there’s a lot of hills, Hence it’s easy to miss nice spots or newly developed properties. However, I do think that I have a decent idea of housing options since I used CraigsList, ForSaleByOwner (on the web), local newspapers (Tico Times, La Nacion), suggestions from locals, walked into condos/buildings with external advertisements. Here are some of the options I found:

• good looking appartments (I wasn’t able to check them) furnished, with swimming pool for $300 weekly and $900 monthly (no lease, but a deposit of one week or one month)
• furnished one bedroom appartment in new building in escazu, close (still need a car) to shops/bars, pool, balcony with great view, diy (do-it-yourself) wifi: offered to me for $1000 on a one year lease, then found someone to have it for $800/month on a one year lease, and finally found it through someone else who was willing to rent it for $700/month on a 6 month lease but with only limited furnishings !
• furnished one bedroom appartment with no view in 5-10 yrs old building in gated area in escazu, close to shops/bars, pool with great view, diy wifi: $750/month on a one year lease, or $850/month for a 2 month lease
• furnished one bedroom appartment with no view in 5-10 yrs old building in escazu, close to shops/bars, no pool, no view, diy wifi: $650/month on a one year lease
• room in well-kept aparthotel La Sabana in sabana norte (middle-class neighbourhood very close to san jose), close to shops/bars, breakfast, no view, private bathroom, pool, wifi: $1560/month + tax
• somewhat run-down, funky hotel called Hemingway Inn in colonial part of san jose, close to shops/bars, breakfast, private bathroom, no pool, no view, wifi: $840/month + tax
• one bedroom appartment in more than 10 yrs old building in middle/lower-class part of san jose, not so close to shops/bars, no pool, no view, diy wifi: $350/month, no lease
• a room for $120/week in a sort of do-it-yourself aparthotel called Hotel California in escazu up in the hills with a great view (see pict below), really quiet, furnished, wifi, large yard, private bathroom but with shared kitchen and living. The only real snag is that it feels more like being on a farm (note that there’s no glass in the windows so that the wind may easily chill you), so absolutely no class. See picts below.

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