Sail-salsa 2007 at Vindalsö

Last week I spent a few days in the Stockholm archipelago with 35-40 salsa friends on the annual “Sail-salsa”, which I have been to three times now. Unfortunately I ended up missing the first 1.5 days of this activity, following my Puerto Rico trip, due to bad weather conditions resulting in delays and a missed flight from New York. Once I got out to the island Vindalsö I was pretty tired and jetlagged but nonetheless happy to be there. Niklas and Annika of Djungelsalsa every year organize this combined sailing and dancing trip. Vindalsö is normally used by sea scouts. It is not too far from the popular Sandhamn and the closest stop for commercial boats from Stockholm City or the Stavsnäs Vinterhamn (winter harbor) is Idholmen.

Nicke & Annika

All participants at the annual sail-salsa are divided into teams for various activities, including helping to prepare lunch and dinner every day and competing in occasional group activities. Apparently last year’s participants had given feedback to Niklas and Annika that they wanted fewer scheduled, joint activities, giving more freedom for spontaneous activities or pure relaxation. There were however some yoga, meditation, tango and Friskis & Svettis workout lessons given, but apart from that people were free to go sailing or sunbathing and reading a book, singing karaoke or other activities as they pleased. Previous years we’ve had treasure hunts and I kind of missed them; they were always great fun and allowed you to bond with your team mates.

There is a house on the island with bunk-beds and those who register early for the sail-salsa get one, the others have to sleep on the floor or camp in tents. I was lucky enough to get a bunk-bed so I got some decent sleep. But unless you bring ear-plugs you may have a hard time sleeping because boy, some guys really snore!

There is a sauna on the island. We usually heat up there after a night of salsa dancing on the outdoor dance arena and then dive into the sea from a landing stage outside the sauna. The water was extremely cold this year – there hasn’t been much of a summer weather warming up the sea – so most people came up again faster than they hit the water!

You’ll find a selection of my photos from Vindalsö below. More photos are available in my photo album on Flickr>>

Boathouse and kitchen

Dance floor - when the scouts are using the island, this is just a roofed gathering place where they take their meals at some simple wooden tables and benches

Meditation
Karin W meditating

Anders K – check out his photos from the sail-salsa here>>

Another Anders practicing Iaido on the beach

Kia & Micke

Veronica, Karin & Håkan W sing karaoke

Left: Anders K, Jackie & Eva prepare dinner. Right: Håkan

Left: Dinner on the beach. Right: Chef Anneli

Michael Lowry, an American from Texas who has been living in Sweden for a while now – he is by the way a great photographer! See more photos from the sail-salsa on his blog. I have taken the liberty of ‘borrowing’ a few photos from Michael below (where noted in parenthesis)…

Me (photo by Michael Lowry)

Sunset

Percy & Veronica

Me & Johan Hast

Salsa dancing
Every night after dinner and sunset, we started dancing salsa on the outdoor wooden floor. There were also occasional swing (lindyhop), tango and disco tunes spreading in the night. There were always a bunch of people who kept dancing till 2 or 3 am, including myself.

Karin W & AK

Michael & Fanta

Fanta & Johan

Rock ring contest
One of the nights Niklas organized a ‘rock ring’ contest – you remember those plastic rings that you tried to ‘rock’ around your hips when you were a kid? Veronica certainly remembered – she was the Queen of Rock Ring and completely demolished the rest of us.

African theme
One of the nights every year has a special theme. Last year it was native Indians and this year it was an African theme. Fanta from French Guinea gave us a lesson in African dance on the beach, which gave me a nice muscle ache in my abdomen, back and thighs which I haven’t felt in a while... Fanta is apparently a famous dancer in her country and her parents (passed away a couple of years ago) and brother famous musicians. She was kind enough to braid my hair before the evening activity and I got to practice my French a little bit.

African dance with Fanta from Guinea (four photos above by Michael Lowry)

Left: Annika & Håkan W. Right: Veronica, Eva, Jackie

Left: Andrew & Elin. Right: Mark, Percy & Niklas

We were divided into two tribes for the evening activity and even fought a war with bows and arrows in the woods, pretending to be African Masai and Zulu warriors fighting each other in a live roll-play. This was great fun but I am still suffering from bruises here and there from the arrows that hit me – Håkan Wirén and Johan Hast are too good bow-men, I’m afraid… I was supposed to be a ‘War Amazon’ in my tribe and leading eight other female bow-shooters, which I failed miserably at since I and several of the others were hit and ‘died’ several times.

Håkan and I at war… (three photos above by Michael Lowry)

Left: Camp fire. Right: Veronica & Jackie

AK & Fanta dancing late-night salsa after African activities

Jackie, Karin & Veronica
Me

After a few days of fun activities, it was time to clean up, empty latrines, sort trash, pack and leave the archipelago. It’s been fun and I already long for next summer!

Also check out Martin's beautiful photos from the sail-salsa here>> (240 pictures)

Puerto Rico Salsa Congress 2007

This was my first time to the world-renowned Puerto Rico Salsa Congress. The congress was held at El San Juan Hotel in Carolina in the Isla Verde area close to the San Juan Luis Muñoz Marín International Airport. Although the experience altogether has been very positive – listening to a number of great live bands and meeting a lot of local, excellent On2 dancers like Jhesus (fabulous dancer with only one arm), Edwin, Joey and Michael (DJ at after parties at Platos) – I must say that I was slightly disappointed in the congress. I’ve heard so much about it and everybody is raving about this world-famous congress so perhaps my expectations were set a little too high.

There were several famous live bands playing at the congress parties like Sonora Ponceña, El Gran Combo de Puerto Rico and Tito Rojas and this was of course a great experience. However, the floor was really bad (some kind of vinyl floor on top of a thick fitted carpet…), and has apparently been so for years which tarnished what could otherwise have been a fabulous congress. The floor was too ‘slow’, soft and sticky and annoying to most dancers who had a problem keeping their balance when doing fast turn patterns and spinning. I heard a lot of people complain about the floor and find it strange that such a well-known congress would not cater better to the dancers who come there. You really need a good hardwood floor when attracting some of the best dancers from around the world.

Sonora Ponceña

There were less international dancers there than expected, or perhaps I should say the regular European and US dancers that I usually meet at other congresses. Maybe they’ve already done the Puerto Rico congress for a number of years and now have decided to do something else.

Apart from Leon Rose and some other UK dancers, and an old friend from London named Edward whom I haven’t seen in a couple of years since he lives in Sydney, Australia these days, I met a different crowd at this congress. There was a mix of local dancers from Puerto Rico, people from different parts of the US – to name one of them Luis from New York who surprisingly enough has only danced for a little over a year but was already very good and I actually believed he had been dancing for ages – and from the Dominican Republic, Colombia, Brazil, Argentina and other countries in Latin America. There was also a big group from Spain supporting Adrian and Anita who competed in the World Salsa Open, a bunch of Italians (I danced quite a lot with a guy named Stefano), the Dutch dance team Los Intocables, and some French.

Edward & I

Edward, his friend Steve from Sydney, and I made a habit of eating breakfast at Edith Café close to El San Juan Hotel after the congress parties. In fact, Edith Café drew lots of salsa dancers both for breakfast and dinner and one night when I had dinner there with my Swedish friends from Stockholm, Laia and Alberto, we saw Eddie Torres (famous New York instructor and usually referred to as “the Mambo King”) and his wife there. They also performed at the congress the night after. Laia, Alberto and I were the only Swedes at the congress, as far as I know.

Alberto and I at Edith Café

The first few days they had an exhibition of paintings outside the congress hall at El San Juan Hotel to celebrate the famous Puerto Rican salsa singer Héctor Lavoe, who died in 1993. The collection was quite strong and impressive and the various artists had depicted some famous songs like El Cantante. See some samples below.

World Salsa Open 2007
Every year, there is a big salsa dancing competition in Puerto Rico. This year it was presented by Jayson Molina, a famous salsa dancer from Puerto Rico. They had a Junior competition for max 18 year-olds, two rounds of eliminations, semi-finals and finals for adult couples – all having been through elimination processes and won national competitions in their home countries – as well as a separate category for dance teams. They all performed on stage against the colorful backdrop facade resembling colonial street houses, characteristic for the Puerto Rico Salsa Congress and used since its start 11 years ago.

Alberto and Laia had won the Swedish competition held at the salsa club La Isla in Stockholm earlier this year, and were in Puerto Rico to compete in the World Salsa Open and represent Sweden. The competition was however fierce and they did not make it to the semi-finals.

Semi-finalists after 2nd Round Elimination

Dinner at Edith with Alberto and Laia after 2nd Round Elimination in World Salsa Open

Finalists

Three top couples – winners of World Salsa Open 2007 in the middle, Anita & Adrian from Spain

After parties
There were two different after parties being arranged between about 3 or 4am when the main congress party ended to 5 or 6 am or so during five of the nights in conjunction with the salsa congress. It was a little unfortunate that they hadn’t coordinated this and just had one official after party since this meant competition between the two venues and splitting up the dancers.

The best dance floor (flat, clean stone floor which was very easy to spin on), bar service and atmosphere were to be found at Platos, a local bar where the drinks were very cheap ($ 2.50 for a beer) and the local DJ Michael played some very good music. I had the pleasure of dancing cha cha cha with Stacey Lopez, another well-known and famous Puerto Rican dancer and instructor, there one night. The first after party night Laia and I were the only two female dancers there and naturally enjoyed the full attention of some 10-15 fabulous male dancers. :-)

The other after party venue was Brava, a nightclub at El San Juan Hotel. This club has a crap floor but played great music, the first night by local DJ Masoz (not sure about the spelling) and the second night by the famous DJ from New York, Henry Knowles, who came there over the last weekend.

After ten nights of dancing in a row, I finally had to leave the beautiful island of Puerto Rico and fly home. Unfortunately, my Puerto Rico vacation trip ended on an annoying note. Due to poor weather conditions, the landing in New York was delayed and I ended up missing my connecting flight from New York to Stockholm. After an hour’s wait at the Continental Airlines’ very slow customer services desk, I was rebooked on a flight to Stockholm 24 hours later! Since I was stuck in New York over Sunday night and they were going to put me up on a hotel, I was hoping I would be able to go dancing at Jimmy Anton’s social or at Wish on Manhattan that night. But after another five hours’ wait at the baggage retrieval conveyor belt (with no luck and the retrieval service finally closing for the day), I had to give up on the idea of going dancing and was put up on a hotel in New Jersey at 2am… The only sensible thing I could do at that point was to wash away the frustration by having a beer in the hotel sports bar with a British teacher, funny enough also named Marie-Louise…

If you ever plan on going to Puerto Rico, a good starting point might be http://www.gotopuertorico.com/ – the Puerto Rico Tourism Company sponsored the salsa congress and since the presenter of the semi-finals and finals of World Salsa Open was forced to repeat this web address over and over again, it was difficult to miss it…

Chillin’ in Puerto Rico

I came home from my vacation in Puerto Rico this past Tuesday. I had a great time – very relaxing, lazy and intense at the same time. I was staying at the Courtyard Marriott Isla Verde (see photo to the right) in Carolina. I had a fabulous view overlooking the beach below and the Atlantic Ocean from my hotel room and balcony.

Puerto Rico is located in the northeastern part of the Caribbean, east of the Dominican Republic. Carolina is Puerto Rico’s fourth largest city, located close to the capital San Juan. Puerto Rico's most famous baseball player, Roberto Clemente, elected into the Hall of Fame in 1973, was from Carolina.

View from my hotel room / balcony

The hotel had a casino, the Banana icecream and pizza/snacks bar, the Picante cocktail bar, the Salsa restaurant which served breakfast, lunch and dinner buffets, and the outdoor ocean-view Sirena restaurant, which is where I took my breakfast to enjoy the very soothing morning view of the beach and ocean with the occasional jogger in the waterline before heading to the rainforest (see separate blog post). The hotel also had a very nice pool area, a fitness center with treadmills, a stair-master and weightlifting machines and handles – and believe it or not, I actually used the fitness center once during my vacation and it felt good, although it rendered me a terrible muscle ache in my calves for days afterwards.

I was dancing ten nights in a row in Puerto Rico, of which eight of them were at the Puerto Rico Salsa Congress (see separate blog post).

There were salsa bands playing in the Picante bar area on the ground floor of the Courtyard Marriott Hotel every afternoon and evening. This was a very pleasant distraction. When you came in from the pool or the beach you could always sip on a glass of white wine or a rum drink and chill before going to the room to get ready for the congress parties. Puerto Ricans are very family oriented, it seems. In the pool area you always saw them in groups with several children and the adults were always very loving and playful with their kids, being very proud of them, judging by their faces. In the Picante bar there were always older couples drinking cocktails and enjoying the bands playing. As soon as the band started playing a slow bolero, all the older couples were up on the dance floor, closing their eyes and holding each other tightly, many of them having to lean forward due to their potbellies to be able to put their cheeks against each other, and seemingly really enjoying the dance. Very endearing.

Salsa band playing in the Picante Bar

The night after my arrival, I was dancing till 3 am in the Picante bar and made friends with Edgardo, a local engineer in his 50’s who has been to the congress for a number of years – I saw him every night there trying to work off his potbelly by dancing and sweating intensively for hours… ;-)

On the Friday before the congress, there was a salsa band playing in the lobby of El San Juan Hotel. I had e-mailed the organizer and president of the Puerto Rico Salsa Congress, Elí Irizarry (his regular job is tour manager for El Gran Combo!), and learned that there would be a few dancers there. Elí was a very friendly and nice person, buying me drinks at the bar and introducing me to some early arriving dancers, including Brian Libier & Mechteld Sterk running the Salsaddiction dance school in Holland and competing in the World Salsa Open a few days later (although they actually were disqualified since the rules stated a time limit of each performance of 2 min and their routine was 2 min 44s…such a shame they hadn’t checked the rules – the audience gave them standing ovations after their performance!), and Patrick, another Dutch dancer from the dance group Los Intocables (see a video on YouTube of all of them). Saturday was the congress welcome party and Patrick’s birthday so he was in a good mood and we ended up partying to mostly reggae ton music (yuck) in the Brava nightclub at the hotel.

Elí Irizarry

Apart from the nightly salsa dancing I was very lazy in Puerto Rico. I slept late (when dancing till 3, 4 or 6 am every night for ten days you get a little worn out…), went to the pool and beach, read a book in the hammock and watched the sunset over the beach. My salsa friends Alberto and Laia from Stockholm came and joined me at the Courtyard a few times, enjoying the pool, beach and restaurant with ocean-view (see photos below).

Laia and Alberto at the Sirena restaurant

Pool area at the Courtyard Marriott Isla Verde

Visit to Old San Juan
One of the afternoons, I went with Alberto, Laia and a young dancer from Brazil, Gustavo, to Old San Juan. After a visit to a reggae music and paraphernalia store where Laia and Gustavo to the owner’s amusement started dancing while listening through a bunch of CD’s, we went to see fort San Cristóbal.

This was quite an interesting visit. Christopher Columbus (‘Cristóbal Colón’ in Spanish) discovered the island of Puerto Rico in 1493, and in the 50 years following, Spain built a vast and lucrative New World empire that helped it become the leading European nation at the time. The conquests of Mexico and Peru provided the Spanish treasury with dependable sources of great wealth in precious gems, gold and silver. Spain sent two armed ship convoys to the New World every year to assure safe delivery of these riches, and the Caribbean Sea was a vital passage-way. It was however also a dangerous maze of islands with few harbors of refuge, and Spain’s authority and territorial rights to the Caribbean were constantly challenged by pirates and the traditional European enemies (England, France and Holland). San Juan was established in 1521 as “the key to the Indies” at the most strategic location on the island of Puerto Rico, and Spain built massive fortifications in the San Juan harbor and other key harbors in the Caribbean and the Gulf of Mexico to safeguard New World possessions and maintain its trade monopoly.

There are two forts in Old San Juan, Castillo de San Felipe del Morro (“Castle of St. Philip of the Headland” – see video here>>) and Castillo de San Cristóbal (“Saint Christopher Castle”). Laia, Alberto, Gustavo and I entered the latter, built 1634-1678 and the largest fort built by the Spaniards on the island. These two massive stonework defenses are the oldest European-style fortifications within the territory of the United States. Unlike El Morro, whose main job was to prevent enemy ships from entering the harbor, San Cristóbal protected the land approaches to San Juan from the east. It’s an example of the “defense-in-depth” principle, meaning that each part of the fort is supported by one or more other parts. If a fort has a single barrier and the enemy breaks through it, its defense is broken. But if a fort has several barriers, each higher and stronger than the one in front of it, and the enemy breaks through one of them, the attacker can still be driven out by fire from the barriers behind it. Both of these bastions and batteries are impressive remnants of Spain’s historic power in the New World. Read more about the history of Puerto Rico here>>

You’ll find a selection of photos from Castillo de San Cristóbal below.

Alberto

From left to right: The Spanish colonial flag (the “Burgundy Cross”, 1516-1556), the Puerto Rican and US flags

Gustavo & Alberto

Me, Gustavo and Laia on the bastion wall

Gustavo, Alberto and Laia in dungeon and catacomb

Iguana lizard

The two forts San Cristóbal and El Morro lie within a mile of each other with a strong city wall in between. We took a walk along the wall and the scenery was beautiful with ocean waves hitting the cliffs below and some houses built on the outside of the city wall. San Juan’s soldiers and settlers once grew food on small plots inside the great walls. Plátanos (plantains), a banana from Africa, and West Indian crops such as sweet potatoes, pumpkin, yucca, malanga and yautia supplemented regular military rations. These fruits and root fruits are common still today in Puerto Rico and my personal favorite was mashed yucca filled with shrimps and a Puerto Rican red sauce with lots of garlic which I was served at Edith Café in Carolina.

Most of Spain’s New World colonies revolted and gained independence during the 19th century and by the 1890’s only Cuba and Puerto Rico remained part of the once so powerful Spanish empire in the Americas. Spain lost Puerto Rico to American troops in the Spanish-American war by the end of the 19th century, as already mentioned in my blog post from the trip to the rainforest.

Colorful colonial style buildings with overhanging balconies pave the cobblestone streets in Old San Juan. The town is very picturesque with inner patios, courtyards, and small town plazas. We hit a Puma store with discounted prices and I bought a cool new bag. The visit to Old San Juan was ended with a cold Medalla Light beer at an outdoor bar before we headed back to Isla Verde and El San Juan Hotel to watch salsa dance performances.

Streets of Old San Juan

Who wouldn’t want to play basketball in this kind of environment with the Atlantic Ocean and palm trees on one side and the medieval city walls of Old San Juan on the other?!

Plaza