I must have been about four years old, and he was fifteen or sixteen. Perhaps that day I had left Llorca, my daycare, early. Or maybe I had stayed home recovering from a bad cold, although in those days children weren’t suspended for runny noses, so I don’t know. Nobody remembers that day. Only me.
I remember I didn’t know how to put my swimsuit on properly and I had a hard time. I put my feet where your arms go and my brother had to fix that mess. I remember Sandor taking me down a little street in Gerona on his bicycle. On the beach there was a little wooden bridge and the sand was dazzling white, like flour for making cakes. The water was clear and crabs walked along the bottom, leaving crisscrossing lines that formed figures I could understand.
That’s the only beach I remember on the Isle of Youth, the one my brother took me to without the adults’ permission.
I wanted to go to that same little beach, El Pescador, I think it was, according to my memory and what people tell me. But my mother, my brother and everyone else told me to go to Bibijagua, better than any other beach on the Isle.
They told me to search my memory, that I was sure to find some image, even a blurry one, of my toes digging holes in the jet-black sand.
Bibijagua was, then, the first beach on the list, even though I had no memory of it. We arrived at six in the morning on the electric scooter of Danielito, our friend Mary’s cousin. He went to great lengths to fulfill every whim of memory and took us to every place, near or far, on the Isle that his battery charge could handle.
Arriving at Bibijagua at night wasn’t exactly a whim, but rather the pleasant command of Unger, the Isle’s historian. “The most beautiful sunrise on the entire Isle of Youth is at Bibijagua beach.” And off we went as if it were an order from high command to arrive before the sun rose.
When we arrived, the first thing we saw was a huge, covered space, freshly painted and completely empty. Perhaps it used to have lockers, although as a dance floor it’s priceless. Later I learned that young people use it to play soccer when they get bored of the saltwater.
Everything was very dark, but we could make out the palm trees and the umbrellas made of palm fronds. We walked around the entire place in the dark, like good beach rangers. As dawn broke, we chatted with Diego and Oliver about the unique feature of that beach: its black sand.
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Black sand beaches exist in various places around the world, from Polynesia to New Zealand. There are black sand beaches in California, Hawaii, Saint Lucia, Puerto Rico, Spain, Indonesia, Tahiti and many other countries. It is said that the jet-black color originates from ancient volcanic activity.
As the sun peeked over the horizon and allowed us to appreciate the landscape, we looked at photos of other black sand beaches around the world. Some of them have calm waters, perfect for a family day out; others have dangerous, extremely cold waters with wild tides and waves.
“Luckily, we have Bibijagua in Cuba,” I told my children, and with that enthusiastic phrase, the debate began, even in the darkness of six-something in the morning, about whether there were other black sand beaches in the Cuban archipelago. And yes, people say there are dark sand beaches in other provinces, but that brilliant, mysterious and pure black is only found on the Isle of Youth.
When dawn finally broke, we put aside the photos of black sand beaches around the world and focused on this beautiful little wonder that doesn’t appear in Google’s lists. On our list of requests, recommendations and whims of memory, Bibijagua was the first destination.
We were alone on the beach, enjoying a much-anticipated sunrise in four different ways. The sun rose gently, and little by little we discovered the place, each in our own way.
Oliver exclaimed, “Oh my God, it’s black, it’s true! We weren’t scammed!” Diego discovered that there’s a lot of green grass and sargassum all along the shore. I was struck by how fine the sand is, like the sand in my memory of the beach my brother took me to when I was four years old. Jorge photographed a fisherman in the distance and, even further away, spotted a boat.
Jorgito discovered that if you dig a deep hole in the sand, salt worms appear, like those found in fertile soil. Perhaps that’s why the lush, green grass grows in the black sand. Oliver discovered that the water was warm, “like jacuzzi water,” according to him, even though he’s never been in one. Diego realized that the sun doesn’t bother your eyes like it does when light splashes off the white sand of any ordinary beach. I enjoyed examining the contrast between the black sand and the white stones that looked like half quartz and half marble. Perhaps the volcanic rock and black marble, weathered for centuries by the ebb and flow of the waves, are the reason the sunrise isn’t orange, like any other beautiful sunrise.
We had the beach entirely to ourselves for almost three hours. We played at taking family photos, those typical ones you post on Facebook or show to friends following your trip. We also played at taking “magazine-worthy” photos, just in case Bibijagua ever makes the list of the world’s most impressive black sand beaches.
Around 9:00 a.m., the entertainers arrived and put on a playlist. The vendors selling snacks and soft drinks also arrived, and we had a snack for the same price as if we were in our neighborhood, half Nuevo Vedado and half Cerro.
We asked why there weren’t many people on the beach; it seemed very late to us, since we’d been awake since 5:00 a.m. They explained that the buses left La Cubana at 9:00 a.m. and that people were already arriving, that the beach got crowded because the transportation was state-run. So we decided to wait for the first bus to arrive before leaving.
When people started arriving, we could see that, indeed, the beach gets crowded. We arrived at 6 a.m. and left at 10 a.m., after experiencing what historian Unger described as the most beautiful sunrise on the Isle — a claim we, as a family, wholeheartedly agree with.
Since we’re early risers, we had the rest of the day to visit other places and continue marveling at that small, genuine beauty that defies easy categorization. We took a handful of black sand with us, hoping other visitors wouldn’t do the same. We left very happy and excited, because while we didn’t see the Northern Lights from Stokksnes, Iceland, we did see the sunrise in Bibijagua.
