A Family Day at Corintia Beach
HAVANA TIMES – This past Saturday, my family was able to spend a different kind of day together. My wife and I decided to take our three children—two girls and a boy—to Corintia Beach, a beautiful and little-known spot right on the border between Mayarí and the municipality of Frank País, approximately 40 kilometers from where we live.
We went on a bus rented by the community, along with other neighbors who joined in the plan, which had been spontaneously organized by the locals themselves. We left at dawn. Luckily, we didn’t have to walk because the second pick-up point in the neighborhood was right in front of my house.
Everyone carried bottles of water and bags of food, fearing there wouldn’t be anything available for purchase—although we figured there probably would be, with so many people running private businesses. Where there are people, there are customers, and vendors will come. The bus, old but still functional thanks to a private lease, arrived on time, which was a good sign.
Corintia is a semi-virgin beach with white sand and clear waters, with so many kilometers available to swimmers that few ever cover the full stretch out of exhaustion, and the white strip fades into the distance. Despite a few tourist facilities—just some basic camping—it still preserves that natural charm, that feeling of a hidden spot untouched by the more organized tourism with its usual infrastructure.
However, the development-minded part of us can’t help but imagine the potential of this place to attract swimmers from all over the world, and how much that could contribute to the local economy—supporting many families and businesses tied to those services, and to the country in general, if there were the kind of economic freedom that’s needed in Cuba. Not to mention everything else.
Once we arrived, the kids wasted no time jumping into the sea. They ran as if the water were calling their names, joyful, oblivious to everything else, immersed in that universe that only children know how to build—between the waves, shaping figures out of sand with buckets, shells, and castles the sea erases without remorse. We adults found a good shady spot—not hard to come by there—and set up our base. There are plenty of yarey (palm) umbrellas among the seagrape trees, providing ample shade.
The sea was calm, as usual. From time to time, I’d go in with the kids, teaching them how to float, how to trust the rhythm of the waves. I literally served as a buoy for them. They overwhelmed me with all their climbing on me. I couldn’t take it for long and would retreat to the shore, watching them play as I chatted with my wife, or with a neighbor I rarely get to talk to because of the stressful pace of life, or I’d just get lost in thought. I tend to reflect a lot—not in a tedious way, but as a kind of pleasure.
There was no shortage of cold beers. Several vendors offered all kinds of cold drinks, sweets, and even food—at good prices, surprisingly reasonable for the location and distance. There were also rounds of inspectors handing out fines—so serious is the harassment of the private sector that they go everywhere. That was the only unpleasant incident, along with a drunk teenager who, after several outbursts with his companions, had to be tied up because he insisted on swimming in that state.
The return trip was quieter. The exhaustion from the intense sun and the restless sea had done their job. But I felt satisfied, because even though we can’t change the harsh reality all at once as we’d like, we can—every now and then—find a little piece of happiness in the things that are still beautiful, like the white sand of the beach and the infinite blue of the sea. That’s no small thing.
