There's something to be said about body image, or the lack of issues thereof. The moment you forget about the cellulite formations on the back of your buttocks, or the fact that your bosom but bursts from its constricting bikini top in such a fashion resplendent of two giant melons, or anything about your body that makes you want to remain forever clothed, your sex life improves tenfold.

Sweeping statement? Let me explain.

In Latin America, from whence I just hailed after a holiday indicative of mojito cocktails and men who wear gold chains and whisper Spanish sweet nothings into my ears, things are a little different.

It appears that no matter your size or proportion, or whether you've been beaten by the ugly stick, you're in love with yourself anyway. It's the Cuban way, I believe.

Too body conscious

A very different approach to the human corpus, if I've ever.

My beach holidays usually comprise Atkins and a strategically placed sarong. And I am mostly clothed at the very least when taking a bus or doing my grocery shopping.

Not because anyone would outwardly protest a woman perusing the frozen peas aisle in her spandex skanties, no. Maybe in Muslim countries. But the fact of the matter is — South African women are terrified of showing off their posteriors.

On any first sexual contact that involves rapid and frantic de-clothing, unless copious amounts of alcohol were consumed before, there's that brief 0.02 second moment of hesitation as you peel off your bra…. are your boobs doing that funny unbalanced thing?

Oh hang, you ate too many toasted cheeses over the holidays and your thighs, you believe, look like the puckered exterior of a Sealy Posturepedic. You hesitate and ask your partner to switch off the lights.

For women, you may be familiar with this; it goes a little something like this:

'But why?'
'To create… a mood.'
'I'm in the mood to see your fine curves.'
'I'm in the mood for complete blackness.'

'They ooze sexuality… '

All of these bodily hang-ups are not so in Latin America. What a refreshing state of affairs!

People openly smooching in the streets of Havana, sucking on cigars, clad in miniscule pieces of swimwear, managing to remain confidently sexier than Stuart Townsend running naked through the streets of Dublin.

They ooze sexuality; their sensuality and love for the bodies that carry them around is almost tangible. I decided to latch onto this state of lax love-handled freedom.

And it worked. What simply happened was this: I adopted a new attitude.

I don't have incessant bodily hang-ups to the point of distraction. I mostly like my body. This holiday, I wanted to love the hell out of it. For a change. I got onto buses dressed only in a bikini like the rest of Havana, I ditched the beach shorts and I didn't check my cellulite before making a Baywatch entry into the surf.

After two days, my conservative all-backside encompassing bikini bottoms were discarded and readily replaced with a thong so tiny, there were moments where I forgot it was even there. I'd become a local.

Newfound quasi-naked liberation

I could do this, because unlike Clifton 4 in Cape Town, I wasn't concerned that my boss would stroll past and see my naked topless breasts, or that an ex would catch sight of the festive tyre that had cropped up from too many Christmas cocktails over the last week. I knew no one here, so why bother with all the usual fuss?

As a result of this newfound quasi-naked liberation, I found someone with which to celebrate my body, through the compromisable position that is missionary. On a large towel (one cannot emphasise enough the importance of 'large') on the dunes of a private beach.

Miguel just poured more attention onto my very accepting love handles, with every stroke of his hand. Had I asked for the lights off, or had I been layered and covered up in any form of clothing, I doubt this liaison would've been worth writing home (on a postcard) about.

But it was. Someone needs to bottle newfound holiday confidence and sell it. They'd make a mint. Because I believe coitus without the boundaries of body image certainly does heighten the holiday fling factor, not to mention the overall physical intensity of the shag itself.