Camagüey and the sea

Camagüey, - To “astride” on the same center of the county that inhabit, to more than half hundred of kilometers on-line straight line of anyone of its costs, the residents of the city of Camagüey seem for antonomasia to suffer the strangest in the possible nostalgias in an insular resident: the nostalgia for the sea.

Result of one of the most atypical colonizatories processes of the Hispanic America that implied successive transfers of the then village of Santa María of the Prince's Port from that original location next to the coast until mediterranean settlement, so strange current establishment “ailment” it suffers every year to thousands of people of Camagüey, mainly during the summery months, when Caribbean sun is determined to burn to all that inhabits this island.

They begin for then with having doubled impulse the preparations for “to go to the beach”. Practically nobody escapes to the process. They don't care the distances to travel, sometimes superiors to the hundred of kilometers, or the difficulties to make it. Neither are impediments trifles like the fatigue of a previous night of parties or some years in the almanac.

During June, July and August, (although in fact the phenomenon extends with more or smaller intensity during the whole year) the people of Camagüey for thousands rushes to the (re)conquist of their beaches.

Santa Lucía, Santa Cruz, Port Pilot, The Caneyes and Beach Florida are the more mentioned and important points of the regional geography again. Toward them travel thousands of people of Camagüey and arrived visitors of other counties daily and even beyond opposite, all aided by the common credo of the sun and the sea.

Even some how many hours are enough for “to load piles”, to appropriate of dozens of snails and shells for friends and family, or to teach to swim to the smallest in the family; but mainly, to return as before made it parents and grandparents, to that same sea, beginning and final of the Island, where everything began.(Amaury Valdivia)