Mi Moto Fidel : Motorcycling Through Castro's Cuba

Product Description: MI MOTO FIDEL: MOTORCYCLING THROUGH CASTRO'S CUBA is a unique, exhil-arating solo adventure into Cuba astride a cherry-red, 1000cc BMW Paris-Dakar motorcycle. Christopher Baker's moto journey took three months, sparking a love affair with the island and giving him instant entree to a people deprived of - and obsessed with - motorized wheels, especially ones covered by chrome. "Cubans rarely betray a sense of astonishment," he writes in Mi Moto Fidel. "Their lives are so topsy-turvy, there's not much that can surprise them anymore. But the motorbike held them spellbound. With its gloss-red tubular steel frame and armor plating designed to protect the moto from a rhino stampede, the Paris-Dakar was unlike anything ever seen. You'd think I'd landed in a flying saucer." With this opening, Baker met a tremendous variety of Cubans - tobacco growers and hookers, fishermen and santeros, soldiers and dissidents, teachers and shopkeepers - in every corner of the island. He describes the encounters with humor and insight, delves into history and politics, and from his singular vantage presents a close-up look at the island's towns, cities, and landscapes. "The soft texture of Cuba and the microwave heat got to me. It felt intoxicating. Just me and the bike purring steadily along a wide-open road, dipping and rising beneath a cerulean sky."Amazon.com Review: Mi Moto Fidel, Christopher Baker's intriguing account of his three-month romp through Cuba on a fire-engine red motorcycle is perhaps the most thorough portrait of this faded Communist country to date. Baker leaves no stone unturned as he revisits Ernest Hemingway's haunts in Havana, checks out a secret cave in the foothills of the sierras that once served as Che Guevara's command post during the Cuban Missile Crisis, and sips motojos at a thatched-roofed beach bar on Playa Los Pinos. On this exhaustive journey, our leather-clad "yanqui" interacts with a myriad of characters from artists to farmers to fisherman to prostitutes, and engages in lively discussions on everything from politics, sex, cigars, and, of course, on the aging revolutionary himself, Fidel Castro. Baker effectively captures the essence of the Cuban people--primarily their generosity and resilient spirit--and his various dalliances with beautiful habaneras (Daisy, Sonia, and Juanita, to name a few) will pique readers' interest (men's more than women's, understandably). By the time Baker winds up back in Havana he has covered some 7,000 miles on his cherished bike. After reading Mi Moto Fidel, you'll no doubt be inspired to hit the road. --Jill Fergus