Cuba

Money can’t buy you love but it can be rented.

In Cuban Spanish, just about every piece of fruit has a sexual connotation and it’s true that in sultry, humid countries, sexuality tends to be free and relaxed, the air charged with a gentle, steaming passion.

Add to that a little hype and a lot of poverty and you have planes full of European men heading to Cuba to find the black girl of their blue dreams. Working girls are everywhere in Havana and are called jiniteras, meaning female jockeys as they ride their clients.

Of course with the rise of sex tourism for women, young Cuban guys are also in demand. It’s not out and out prostitution but rather something more like a relationship of convenience, a few dollars in spending money for a holiday boyfriend going a long way in the local market.

That the socialist ideals of Castro’s Cuba should after half a century of isolation be reduced to becoming the sex capital of the Caribbean is a little mystifying and a little sad. Havana used to be America’s offshore casino and bordello and now it’s fast heading back that way.

Can love be found in Cuba?

Yes, but you would definitely need to speak Spanish to have any hope of understanding the local culture and be regarded as anything other than a tourist out for cheap thrills. It would take time and you’d need to find someone who has a steady job and doesn’t just hang around the bars on the hunt for a rich estranjero.

More about Cuba’s culture of Jineteras and here

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