Cubaphiles do love their vehicles, and veteran English travel writer Christopher Baker has a very special one. His is a red 1,000 cc Paris-Dakar BMW, which he rides like a fully erect penis across Cuba while doing research for a travel guidebook. He covers 7,000 miles in three months and sleeps with an unspecified but large number of young Cuban women, whom he describes in details worthy of a Playboy centerfold writer. The approach he takes in this first-person account of his adventures will definitely grab readers' attention, and it's entertaining for a while. But it wears thin quickly, especially for female readers who see what he seems blind to: that these gorgeous young women are sleeping with him because they are desperate for money or to find a wealthy foreigner to take them away from very difficult lives. At one point he, who is in his 40s, actually relates a story about asking his 19-year-old girlfriend why Cuban women prefer older men. They treat us with more consideration,' she had replied. And they're better lovers,' he writes. It's a stock answer that sugar daddies have fallen for throughout the ages.

Fortunately, Baker does have a brain, and when it kicks in, he turns this sex-tourism romp into an intelligent and perceptive look at the new Cuba emerging from the ashes of the Soviet Union.

Baker admits up front that he went to Cuba with a leftist ideology and romantic notions of the Revolution. He also hints that his opinions would change a great deal over the course of his trip. He sees with his own eyes the absurd and sometimes disastrous results of Castro's mercurial policies. He hears from the Cubans themselves complaints and jokes about Castro's whims and vanities.

The more critical Baker becomes of the government, the more he realizes he is being monitored and that some people who speak with him are being harassed by authorities.

One of the stories that best illuminates the feelings of Cubans about the state of their lives is Baker's account of being in Havana during the time Elian Gonzales was in Miami:

I attended the Havana rallies, immersing myself in a sea of chanting, flag-waving Cubans. Some teenagers sang a muffled version of the protest chant, Elian, our friend! Cuba is with you!' turning it into Elian, our friend! Take us with you!' While CNN newscasts aired bloated reports about spontaneous passions in Havana, trucks with loudspeakers cruised the streets, summoning loyalists to the demonstrations. Schoolchildren and workers were bused in for these almost festive occasions.

Overall, the book is an insightful, informed and very readable book for those who are curious about Cuba and for those who just like to read a good adventure story.

This article appears in Apr 19-26, 2001.