I am also interested in Spanish and Portuguese. I have quite a number of friends from Latin America and they are encouraging me to learn the language.
One of the best ways of learning a language is to listen a lot a lot a lot. The best listening ways is to listen to the Music and slowly by slowly you will learn the pronunciation, vocabularies and etc.
my favorite artists are Carlos Vives and Fonseca. They have really good music. try this
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=miB_O7lsn84