3 Life Lessons that Tango Taught Me

Tango dancers at Tango Porteño

My Life in Buenos Aires has been marked in many ways by tango. I’ve had the good fortune to attend 3 tango shows and I’ve also taken a few tango lessons. At the same time, tango has been teaching me. I wrote about these lessons over on Pink Pangea. Here is a snippet from my piece:

Buenos Aires is synonymous with tango. Tango permeates the city on every level, from the superficial tourist traps of La Boca, where you can pose with tango dancers on El Caminito, to the touts on Florida Street selling tickets to the city’s many tango shows. But the real spirit of tango can be found in the dimly lit milongas (tango salons) where beginners, tango fanatics and professionals mix, moving sensually across the dance floor to the moving backdrop of accordions and violins emanating passionately from live tango bands.

 

Naturally, no trip to Argentina is complete without experiencing a bit of this tango culture. This tango culture, I might add, is not the overdramatic tango of Hollywood movies, but rather the original, authentic Argentine brand of tango, which smolders quietly in its intimacy. While I highly recommend attending a tango show for the grand venues, historical journeys, endearing cheesiness and spectacular dancing, the best way to really get to know tango is to take lessons in one of the city’s many milongas.

 

Read the rest of the article on Pink Pangea.

Passionate dancers at Esquina Carlos Gardel

The Art of Travel

Beautiful blossoms in Bariloche

 

“Travel does what good novelists also do to the life of everyday, placing it like a picture in a frame or a gem in its setting, so that the intrinsic qualities are made more clear. Travel does this with the very stuff that everyday life is made of, giving to it the sharp contour and meaning of art.” – Freya Stark

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As you may have noticed I’ve been a bit quiet on the blog front. Besides my vacation and work, I’ve been working on a few side projects. You may also have seen a new page on the blog where I’m trying to keep track of my writing elsewhere. One of these projects is writing for a great website for female travellers called Pink Pangea. My first article, Why I Love Living in Buenos Aires was published while I was away. You can catch my writing on Pink Pangea twice a month. In the meantime I’m working away at writing up all my adventures around Argentina, so stay tuned.