Our Port in Havana.

Cuba's best kept secret: It has one of Latin America's most efficient ports.

I SAT IN THE PASSENGER SEAT OF A BOXY, RUSSIAN-STYLE Kcar waiting for the Cuban guards to raise the gate. My heart thumped. I felt like a spy, full of secret information and carrying the pictures to prove it.

The guard nodded at us, and the gate slowly rose like in a James Bond movie. Somewhere in the back of my mind, the theme "Live and Let Die" played. The car was inching forward when the guard suddenly stepped in front of us.

He held his left hand out warning us to stop, while his right hand rested on his holster. I wondered what to do with my film. I thought about swallowing it. My driver jumped out of the car and talked to the guard. A second later, another guard appeared. He and the driver walked back to the car. The guard climbed in the back seat. "He just needs a lift," the driver said. "We're going to drop him off down the road."

I almost threw up.

I should have known that the Cubans had no intention of stopping me from reporting this secret: Havana is one of the most efficient ports in the Americas. We're talking about a port that can move 45 boxes of cargo each hour-that's right up there with New York, Miami and other top US. maritime gateways, and better than many major Latin American ports. Havana moves more than 100,000 containers of cargo a year, a volume somewhere between Philadelphia and Boston and around the level of Montevideo.

To be sure, these figures come from Cuban officials, which makes them just as suspect as claims made by any other port in the world. But I can vouch for the ability of the Cuban piers to move the cargo. Modern cranes take cargo to dockside rails or trucks and other vehicles to be stacked in the terminal or moved straight out onto the highway.

Cuba also has a long history as a major cargo hub. The Spaniards invested heavily in the island's ports to ship silver and gold from colonial America to Europe. The United States did the same to move products throughout the Americas until the mid-1900s. The now-defunct Soviet Union plowed money into its lone cargo hub in the Western Hemisphere, too. That has meant that while other Latin American ports were learning to tell a container crane from a forklift, Havana was moving boxes with the best of them.

Easy turnaround. The fall of the Soviet empire had evil consequences for Havana piers. A tide of disrepair rolled in, but the infrastructure has remained. When c6mpanies from Spain, Italy, Germany and other European countries decided to set up shop in Cuba, they found that with relatively little investment--just how much is unclear- the ports could be brought up to snuff in no time.

In many cases, the foreigners made port improvements in conjunction with other projects on the island. Germany invested in railroad operations that feed into port. Canada-based Sherritt's nickel mines required improved facilities in Havana, too. After all, Cube's an island and the sea is the major highway and Havane's the chief gateway.

The mid-sized Cuban shipping company, Coral Lines, is now weighing anchor in ports all over.

The one part of the world that will not see the black hulls of Coral Lines ships, of course, is the United States. U.S.[ restrictions see to that. They also make sure that other shipping lines cannot call in Cuba if they plan to call in the United States anytime soon.

If the United States lifted the embargo, experts in world shipping circles say that Cuba would become a hub for the Americas again. "Everyone is watching this," says Mark Miller, a spokesman for Crowley Maritime, one of the key shipping lines in the Americas trades. And everyone has a plan, though few will talk about theirs officially because of the legal ramifications. The Jacksonville, Florida port was fined a few years ago for making a trade visit to Cuba.

Nonetheless, anyone who knows the industry and goes to Havana will find that the port's one of shipping's best-kept secrets--and one the Cubans would never mind sharing.