Teresa Williamson
Richard Simmons and lost love played a key role in Teresa's globe-trotting, jet-setting ways.
Teresa Rodriguez Williamson, a.k.a. Tango Diva, was working for Richard Simmons when an Australian
surfer caught her eye at the health club. Within months of this chance romantic encounter, she packed up her meager
belongings and hopped on a plane to Australia—as a married woman. While things didn't work out with the man,
she did fall head over heels with The Land Down Under...and traveling.
During her difficult separation, Teresa took to the friendly skies to find some solace and inner
peace, and this time alone. She hit London, Paris, and New York on a whirlwind summer tour, but with no guidebook
for the solo gal available, she had to overcome the treacherous travels she encountered all by herself.
Teresa returned to Australia following her big city tour. Her new confidence she gained from traveling shined
and once back in Oz, she was signed by a modeling agent and asked to be a chaperone on the popular Aussie
game show, "Blind Date." Her weekends were spent in tropical 5-star locales with winning game show contestants.
It was during this stint that she garnered many of the travel secrets she yearns to share with women today.
In 1993, Teresa moved back to the United States and began working in advertising, but once again
she longed for the excitement and rejuvenation of solo travel. Instead of waiting around for her friends' schedules
to clear up so they could join her, she planned to go alone. Since then, Teresa has traveled most of the world by
herself and considers her trips the most empowering and inspiring times in her life.
Now based in San Francisco, Teresa continues to travel as often as utterly possible. She's compiled the best of her travel tips and secrets, plus a few surprises, for women who long to traverse the world over, in her upcoming book FLY SOLO: The 50 Best Places on Earth For a Girl to Travel Alone (Perigee, Penguin Books).
Teresa's Top 15 All-Time Favorite Travel Moments:
• Dancing in the Samba Parade in Rio de Janeiro during Carnival in Brazil.
• Jubilee Christmas Eve at the Vatican, Italy.
• Afternoon tea at Lock Ness, Scotland.
• Riding horseback through the Queensland jungle while chasing butterflies.
• Running through lavender fields in Tasmania.
• Snorkeling in Fiji.
• Hiking the Aztec ruins in Teotihuacan, Mexico.
• Playing with dolphins in the Bahamas.
• Sitting in on an Irish Parliament session in Dublin.
• Flamenco dancing in Barcelona, Spain.
• Sipping champagne on a yacht in Greece.
• Shopping in Paris for the perfect pink stilettos.
• Riding a purebred Arabian horse past the great pyramids of Egypt.
• Watching the sun rise over Macchu Pichu, Peru.
• Flying (and landing!) solo out of John Wayne Airport in Orange County,
California.
