Three weeks into my Argentina experience and I am beginning to live, breath and dream this delectable country. No longer do I confidently walk into the middle of the road looking right and have to frantically dodge the cars plowing mercilessly towards me from the left; my pink, traumatised English skin has been tamed and subdued and is now a more acceptable tan colour, and I have even been mistaken by one blind and deluded soul for an Argentine!! Get a load of me! And so, it was with this new-found Hispanic confidence that I headed boldly towards my first ever Salsa lesson, an experience that put me decidedly back in my box.

Lurking around the outskirts of the local dance academy were 15 or so swarthy South American youths with sexily tousled hair and bums that put Ms Jennifer Lopez to shame. “You are the English one, right?” Ummm...urrr…unfortunately yes. Indeed, it was that obvious. “You ever dance Salsa before?” Ummm…oooo… no. Undoubtedly, that was also soon to become obvious. “You ever dance anything at all before?” Do made-up dance routines to "S Club 7" in the playground count?? They stared at us toasted westerners and we withered under their gaze. But the people of Cordoba are not capable of snobbery and we soon realized that their expressions were more of pity and alarm than anything related to our foreign intrusiveness. They seemed to be questioning how anyone can reasonably live without ever learning to dance. Our lives must be joyless, melancholy and lacking in all purpose. And so like Rolph Harris with a group of wounded, vulnerable fox cubs, the sexy Argentines took us under their wing and endeavored to teach us what, to them, was up there with “Respiration” on the list of important bodily functions.

Sadly, I was not graced with great womanly attributes in the chest department and all my attempts at the upper body shaking just didn’t quite have the impact that it did with the feisty argentine kids. I wandered about, stressed and floppy in the stifling heat, while they thrusted, shook and generally contorted their bodies in ways I thought impossible. Nevertheless, I can honestly say that never have I enjoyed self-humiliation to the degree that I did last night. My foreignness, which is usually such a hindrance, made me into the sort of quirky curiosity that this country seems to embrace. So Tuesday I will once again wheedle my way between the bottoms and breasts towards the Salsa floor and be that corner of this foreign land that is forever so very English…