cuba travel expert Cuba expert Christopher P Baker is available for speaking engagements, media interviews, story assignments & as a tour escort. Author of six books about Cuba, Baker has visited Cuba more than 40 times and has met Fidel Castro. He has been privileged to address the National Press Club, National Geographic Society (televised “Live from National Geographic”), and World Affairs Council. He has appeared on ABC, CBS, Fox TV, NBC, NPR, & dozens of other radio & TV outlets, and serves as a travel consultant and tour escort for such prestigious organizations as National Geographic. Read my Cuba blog Listen to my NPR radio interview See my Fox TV interview Disclaimer: The views of Fox News  are not those of Christopher P Baker. This interview was filmed in 2002 and information herein may have changed. Book me! 760 327 9879 or e-mail “Thank you for your wonderful, lively, informative, fun and well organized presentation.” Kate Simpson, Academic Travel Abroad, Inc. costa rica travel expert Costa Rica expert Christopher P Baker is available for speaking engagements, media interviews, story assignments & tours. Baker has visited Costa Rica every year since 1989 and has authored five guidebooks about Costa Rica, plus the ‘Costa Rica Pura Vida’ travel app. He has given dozens of talks nationwide, acts as a tour escort for National Geographic Expeditions and Smithsonian Journeys, and has been interviewed about Costa Rica on more than a score of leading radio and TV shows. Read my Costa Rica blog See my TV show Don't need a whole book? Buy a Moon Spotlight or buy an eBook for Kindle, Nook, or SonyReader.

Feature Stories T The following copyrighted stories can be licensed as editorial content for a fee. Any other reproduction or use of the stories in any form without prior written permission, whether electronic or print, is strictly prohibited. Complete story list   page 2   page 3   page 4                 Complete story list... Asia Agra - Much More than the Taj Mahal India on an Empty Stomach Jai Singh’s Observatories: India’s Star Attractions Ubud: Cradle of Balinese Art Australasia & Pacific Cruising the Cannibal Isles -- from Tahiti to the Marquesas Islands on a copra freighter fit for a voluptuary The Malleable Art of the Marquesas Pademelons, Potoroos and Quolls: Wildlife viewing in a triptych of Australia's best wildlife parks Cuba & Caribbean The Abacos -- Steeped in Loyalist tradition Chasing Che’s Chevy -- Cuba’s old American cars soldier on (Air Jamaica inflight) Chasing Che’s Chevy in Castro’s Cuba (Automotive Traveler) Cuban Cabarets -- Socialism and Sensuality Cuba -- A Haunting Realm of Eccentricity, Eroticism, and Enigma Cuba Lost and Found: A country drenched in Cold War-era nostalgia is poised for a full-scale tourist invasion Cuba Spins a Bicycle Revolution Havana -- Haunted by Hemingway’s ghost Havana: The most exhilarating city in the Caribbean is full of intrigue and romance Mi Moto Fidel: Motorcycling Through Castro’s Cuba Treasure Beach -- The Other Side of Jamaica Central America & Mexico Acapulco: The hottest of hot spots for the rich, famous and beautiful The Joys of Mud Wrestling in Costa Rica Jungle Water - Voyaging by sea to Costa Rica and Panama North America Alaska – Touring by Small Boat in a Great Land Cycling Mississippi -- Two-wheel Touring along the Great River Road Fast Action Fun on the 'River of No Return' -- Whitewater Rafting on Idaho's Salmon River Git along Littl' Doggie: Cattle Drive Vacations Gallop into City Slickers Hearts No Bones About It: Dino-mania is sweeping America Objects of Bright Pride: Southeast Alaskan indigenous communiities witness a renaissance in Art Palm Springs Redux - An oasis of Modernism in the desert springs back to life Palm Springs Redux: Hollywood stars are flocking to where its 1967 all over again Thar She Blows! Eyeball to Eyeball with the Great Pacific Whales Top Gun for a Day Yosemite: a Winter Wonderland England & Europe A Dickens of a City -- Walking in the author's footsteps through London Blue Plaques: London's Test of Enduring Fame England - It's All a Bloomin' Garden Don Quijote’s La Mancha The Cyclades: Greece’s Sybaritic Isles Lying in State -- English country house hotels fit for a king Maze Craze -- New Life for a Dead-End Game Rememberin' the 'Mighty Eighth' – Ghosts of the U.S. 8th air force come alive in East Anglia Topiary Comes of Age... New Age, That Is! Miscellaneous Kiddy Sex: Tourists seek 'love' beneath the palms are destroying whole cultures King for a Day -- Enjoying the good life at Austin’s upscale men’s spa The Little Knife that Could -- The Swiss Army Knife celebrates 125 years in 2009 Panama Hats: Putting on the Style South America Cruising down to Rio -- a journey down the Amazon river is an adventure in fecundity in more ways than one The Galapagos Island: Origins revisited in a menagerie unlike any other Cuba Lost and Found: A country drenched in Cold War-era nostalgia is poised for a full-scale tourist invasion I’m in the mezzanine bar of Havana’s chic new Hotel Saratoga. The hotel has been open barely a week and I’m admiring the twenty-first century sophistication reminiscent of trendy digs in New York or London, when the elevator doors part and a muscular young man steps outs. He’s naked except for a towel around his waist, and water from the rooftop pool puddles up as he slips fish-like through the bar and into the lobby.      Slack-jawed, I look on as he saunters towards the front doors intent, it seems, on exposing himself to Cubans strolling along Paseo de Martí.      The hotel desk clerk runs an intercept.      “Excuse me, sir,” the clerk says respectfully in near-perfect English. “We don’t allow guests in the lobby dressed in towels.”      “Yeah... I know!” the guest – a yanqui – replies with disdainful dismissal.      I'm embarrassed at this rare and unusual expression of the "ugly American." I feel the yin and yang of deja vu and premonition: the former, of watching a stage farce from the BBC's hilarious hotel-based sitcom Fawlty Towers; the latter, of possible things to come as a U.S. invasion hovers on a not-too-distant horizon. View the full story License the story   Mi Moto Fidel: Motorcycling Through Castro’s Cuba I cruised to Cuba at night, hunkered in the hold like the smuggled human freight in Ernest Hemingway’s To Have & Have Not.    “They’ll harass you, maybe even confiscate your motorbike and throw you in jail,” a Cuban-American had warned as I set out from Key West in high seas.      Instead, Cuban officials greeted us warmly as we tied up at Marina Hemingway. They even helped me manhandle my capitalist toy onto the dock. I imagined it would take all day to clear Customs. But no. Three hours after arriving in Cuba, I fired up and roared off for downtown Havana.      I liked the panache of touring Cuba by moto. I saw myself as a latter-day Che Guevara, whose own motorcycle journey would have been the adventure of a lifetime had he not met Fidel. The bike would turn my own travels into an adventure. And nowhere in Cuba serves up adventure as much as the Sierra Maestra, the rugged mountain range where Che and Fidel launched their Revolution in 1956. The Circuito Sur highway, which wraps around the Sierra Maestra, delivers adventure in spades – a perfect tropical cocktail of adrenalin-charged curves, rugged terrain, and superlative vistas. View the full story License the story Top Gun for a Day (April 6, 2009) George Papapetrou, a 31-year-old petroleum engineer, has come all the way from London for a chance to play Maverick from Top Gun for a day. Talk about a flying fool. I've just shot him down in a combat zone at 7,000 feet. Smoke trails his plane as he rolls over in a cartwheel and plunges toward the beryl-blue sea.      This is no simulation. George and I are participating in a mock fight arranged by southern California-based AirCombat USA, a civilian dogfighting school that offers total neophytes a true fighter pilot experience. From armchair to ace in one day!      Amazingly, no pilot's license or flying experience is required. The company, founded in 1988 by former airline pilot Capt. Mike Blackstone, lets ordinary folks take the controls of real fighter-trainer planes while instructors (most of them former military fighter pilots) command you through six G-pulling, adrenalin-charged, sweat-inducing mock combats in which you try to shoot down your opponent before he shoots you.      The experience takes exhilaration to the extreme. The world is a vortex spinning around in my head as we flip upside down, roll, twist, climb, and dive with the throttle pushed to the max. Every panic button in my body flips to fight-or-flight status. I manage to hang onto my breakfast. George isn't so lucky. On our third dogfight he briefly blacks out from extreme Gs... View the full story License this story Jungle Water -- Voyaging by Sea to Costa Rica & Panama (January, 2009) Cruising along the shores of Portobelo Bay, I was enthralled by the rich and redolent world of the mangroves. Shaded from the blistering sun, we puttered through waterways that narrowed down to a lurky closeness. Ospreys wheeled and slid overhead. Ibis and stilt-legged egrets patrolled the riverbanks, their heads tilted forward, long bills jabbing for tasty tidbits. There were sloths, too, hanging upside down from the branches in a state just short of complete torpor; and howler monkeys leaping from branch to branch in the trees to the side of the river.      Looking over my shoulder, I could make out the Castillo de San Jeronimo bristling with cannons guarding the harbor, harking back to the days when Sir Francis Drake ravaged what was once the wealthiest city along the Spanish Main. It was a magnificent juxtaposition. Mother Nature melding with such glorious history. I was beginning to see why travelers are finally flocking to Panama like migrating macaws... View the full story License this story The Joys of Mud Wrestling in Costa Rica (December 2008) “Best turn around now mate. If you get through, I’ll buy ya a pint... and I’ll throw in my missus for free!”      Now, I’m not generally a gambling man and I don’t normally risk my life for a beer and another man’s woman. When a worldly Australian says a road can’t be driven, I’m prepared to believe him. He described the route -- a 30-mile stretch of Costa Rica’s Pacific coast -- in several ways, the most polite of which was a “daggy” (a dirty lump of wool at the back end of a sheep). But still I pressed on.      I took a more charitable view. I’d spent the last month perfecting my four-wheel driving technique over, around and across terrain that would have challenged a goat. As long as I could resist being carried off into the mangroves by the mosquitoes, I reckoned I could get through. Sure, it was still the west season. And the wettest on record at that. But the alternative was to follow the paved road inland and over the mountains then back to the coast -- a 100-mile detour. And that felt like cheating. I should have listened... View the full story License this story King for a Day - Enjoying the good life at Austin’s upscale men’s spa When the invitation came to sample the wares of "one of the finest private gentlemen's executive clubs in the country," my alarm bells went off. High-class strip club?      Double-take over and never one to shy away from a soothing experience, I signed up for an indulgent weekend at El Rey Club, in Austin, Texas. The brainchild of Clint Campbell, Campbell, former CFO of Dell computer, El Rey is the latest and largest of the dozen or so full-service spas in North America now dedicated to serving men-only. It's a genre that's rapidly growing.      Men are getting over the image of spas as frivolous places for women and effeminate, latte-sipping types. In fact, men now make up nearly one third of all spa-goers, according to the International Spa Association, which reports that the male market is the fastest growing segment in the industry.      No surprise then that most day spas now offer treatments for men, who have finally caught on to the concept of good grooming and pampered indulgence that women have known about for years. Discriminating Alpha males who like to maintain their best appearance with a clean, professional look are now signing up for pampering manicures and pedicures, facials, and what previously was surely a blush-inducing taboo – body waxing!.. View the full story License the story Palm Springs Redux: Hollywood stars are flocking to where its 1967 all over again In the 1950s and '60s, Frank Sinatra and his 'Rat Pack' made Palm Springs the definition of cool. By the late 1970s, the Hollywood set had moved on, and Palm Springs went into decline. During the past decade, Palm Springs has staged an impressive comeback. A whole new generation of Hollywood stars is flocking to where its 1967 all over again and you can feel like an old-time movie star as you sip your martini poolside. Here are the best choices of where to stay, dine and play.      Hollywood-tinged hedonism began in the thirties, when stars of the Silent Screen cottoned on to Palm Springs' reclusive possibilities as a demure hideaway for their parties and peccadillos. Marlene Dietrich, Clark Gable, Bette Davis, and Errol Flynn soon became regular fixtures. Later decades brought the Rat Pack, all of whom bought homes here in which to winter and play, as did scores of their Hollywood peers.      Palm Springs' stark landscapes also attracted iconoclastic architects – Albert Frey, William Cody, John Lautner, Richard Neutra, and E. Stewart Williams – now recognized as modern masters. The celebrities' sharp-lined Modernist homes defined the vernacular style of the city and were an ideal complement to the elegantly informal (and often debauched) desert lifestyle. Palm Springs became the very epitome of glamour, wealth, and relaxation before sinking into deseutude in the 1980s.      Well, the glow is back. Today, winter brings the likes of Chris O'Donnel and Donatella Versace, while Brad Pitt and Angela Jolie fly in their own planes to hang out. Newly fresh and compelling, this desert hot spot again exudes contemporary cool. View the full story License the story Havana: The most exhilarating city in the Caribbean is full of intrigue and romance Seduction comes quickly in Cuba.      Walking Havana's streets you sense you are living inside a romantic thriller. You don't want to sleep for fear of missing a vital experience.    Before the revolution, Havana was a place of intrigue and tawdry romance. The U.S. Mafia ran things hand-in-hand with corrupt dictator Fulgencio Batista, who's Babylon offered a tropical buffet of sin. Assassins and solicitous women lurked in the shadows. The whiff, the intimation of liaison, of conspiracy, is still in the air.    My first reaction was of being caught in an eerie 1950s time warp.    Fading signs advertising Hotpoint and Singer conjure up the decadent decades when Cuba was a virtual colony of America. High-finned, voluptuous dowagers from the heyday of Detroit are everywhere, too: chrome-laden DeSotos, corpulent Buicks, stylish Plymouth Furies and other relics of '50s ostentation, when American cars reflected the wealth, fantasy, gaudiness and sex with which Havana was at that time synonymous. They weave among sober Russian-made Ladas and Moskovitchs, their large engines guzzling precious gas at an astonishing rate.     All the glamor of an abandoned stage set is there, patinaed by pathos and aching with age. Havana seemed fill with sunwashed sadness and sultry spontaneity, recalling the decayed decadence and dignity of Naples and New Orleans. View the full story License the story Complete story list   page 2   page 3   page 4