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Cigars, mojitos, beaches, baseball, Hemingway haunts
and Tropicana girlie shows are all very well. Enjoy your trip.
But for those who want to pack along 500 years of history with
their sunscreen, here are two new books about Cuba that reflect
the island's remarkable history.
CUBA: A CONCISE HISTORY FOR TRAVELERS (Now Available from Harbour Publishing 2005)
101 TOP HISTORICAL SITES OF CUBA (Beach
Holme $24.95) 0-88878-440-6
In 1998, after covering Pope John Paul II's first Cuban mass
in Santa Clara for The Province newspaper, Alan Twigg
was stranded for eight hours in a Cuba airport, waiting out
a mild hurricane. He started to gather notes about Cuban history.
He didn't stop.
Since then he has traveled throughout Cuba, from the off-limits
birthplace of El Presidente to the Virgin
of Copper basilica (Cuba's most sacred site), to
the seldom-visited landing site for Fidel Castro's rag-tag
revolutionaries at Playa las Colorados.
"I've seen rallies for Elian Gonzalez
in Bayamo and visited the Bay of Pigs. I've
seen the abandoned Soviet nuclear power plant in Cienfuegos
and stood beneath that gigantic Che Guevara
memorial in Santa Clara
"I've seen the Guantánamo Naval Base
and bought trinkets in the postcard-perfect streets of Trinidad.
I've gazed at the mists above Pico Turquino
and dawdled in the Celia Sánchez museum in
Pilón. I saw the Cross of Columbus (allegedly
the oldest European relic in the Americas) and explored Cuba's
legacy of slavery with a santeria babalawo (medium)
in El Cobre, the site of the oldest, continually
operational open pit mine in the Americas.
"All of which I've left out of the history book.I'm not
all that keen on those 'travel writer as hero' books. If you're
carrying a Visa card, you're hardly Indiana Jones. I mostly
wanted to provide a perspective that was not duly influenced
by either American or Cuban prejudices and ideologies. Give
people information so they can make up their own minds about
Cuba.
"For some wide-eyed people, it's paradise. For some
who know more, it's a police state. It's not for me to say."
The history was followed by an amply illustrated, one-of-a-kind
guide book that moves from east to west, from the second oldest
European settlement in the Americas -- Baracoa -- through
Santa Clara where tourists can visit the remains of Che Guevara
-- to Havana, one of the greatest cities on the Earth. It
is exclusively devoted to historical sites.
- Beach Holme Press
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