As one of the nat­ur­al won­ders of Trinidad and To­ba­go, Mara­cas Beach is a place peo­ple of­ten go to in or­der to for­get their wor­ries.

As the own­er of one of the Richard’s Bake and Shark fran­chis­es, Abi­gail George walks its sands every day. But her wor­ries are start­ing to mount and COVID-19 is re­spon­si­ble.

Last Sun­day, the beach was full of peo­ple, in­evitably mean­ing busi­ness was good. But that changed this week.

“Sales are ter­ri­ble for me. I think cus­tomers are scared,” she said Thurs­day.

She is al­so scared.

Cus­tomers, in­clud­ing for­eign­ers, come with­in two feet of her to place their or­ders. While she us­es san­i­tiz­er and makes a gen­uine at­tempt, it’s dif­fi­cult to prac­tice so­cial dis­tanc­ing on the job, she lament­ed. Up un­til this junc­ture, how­ev­er, the moth­er of one hasn’t been tempt­ed to close her busi­ness tem­porar­i­ly. But she now has lit­tle choice but to con­sid­er it.

“Well, it de­pends on what the news and the Gov­ern­ment is say­ing we might have to. If this con­tin­ues we will have to. It won’t be about if we want to," she said.

A stall over from Abi­gail is Aun­ty Tia’s Shark and Bake. For own­er San­dra Gibbs, it makes lit­tle sense deny­ing she might have to close up shop soon. She said she will base that de­ci­sion on next Sun­day’s turnout.

“Of course, I’m start­ing to wor­ry, like every­body else, like every­body else who has small busi­ness­es,” she said.

While she hopes to avoid clos­ing, she con­ced­ed it may be best not on­ly for her but for the coun­try at large.

Full of praise for the Gov­ern­ment’s han­dling of the pan­dem­ic, she urged cit­i­zens to lis­ten to Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley.

With their beach tow­el’s spread across the sand, two young women, Hayleigh Lopez and Adan­na Julien, struck pos­es for their self­ies. They set up away from the oth­er 30 or so peo­ple on the beach. They al­so main­tained, in­con­sis­tent­ly al­beit, a dis­tance be­tween one an­oth­er. Hayleigh is Trinida­di­an while friend Adan­na is a Cana­di­an na­tion­al here since Car­ni­val, who is re­turn­ing home next Sun­day.

“I’m just try­ing to en­joy the rest of my va­ca­tion as best as I can. I’m at the beach be­cause I love the beach. I am en­joy­ing my time left be­cause when I do go back to Cana­da I will have to self-quar­an­tine for 14 days,” Julien said.

Lopez has al­so been in self-iso­la­tion. Apart from this trip to the beach, she has not been out­side, be­sides go­ing to work, for the last two weeks or so.

“It’s a des­per­ate at­tempt for a change of scenery. It de­press­es to be in­side my house for so long,” Lopez said.

De­spite the Gov­ern­ment’s call for cit­i­zens to stay away from pub­lic spaces, large crowds of peo­ple are still head­ing to the pop­u­lar north coast beach­es, ac­cord­ing to Las Cuevas life­guards. Pa­trol cap­tain Car­lyle Ryan said af­ter 2 pm on week­days and on week­ends the beach­es are full.

“We would like peo­ple to lis­ten, or fol­low. The world knows, be­cause as life­guards we make bod­i­ly con­tact with vic­tims in res­cue,” he said.

Ex­press­ing con­cern, Ryan said he ac­knowl­edges peo­ple are bored and frus­trat­ed, by the mea­sures im­ple­ment­ed to deal with COVID-19. How­ev­er, he urged cit­i­zens to use com­mon sense and re­frain from com­ing to the beach, es­pe­cial­ly in large num­bers.

“If we make bod­i­ly con­tact with some­one who has the virus, what is our po­si­tion? Right? We tak­ing it home to our fam­i­ly. As we speak we don’t have any hand san­i­tiz­er,” Ryan said.

Asked if he be­lieved the beach should be closed, he said, “Yes, it should be, be­cause when you look at out­side, at the news, and you see the mag­ni­tude of this pan­dem­ic, it speaks it for it­self.”

But the beach­go­ers who were there do not want the beach closed.

Maxi taxi dri­ver Jairam Balka­ran has stopped work­ing, park­ing up his 25-seater, in light of the pan­dem­ic. On Tues­day, Wednes­day and yes­ter­day, he made the trip to the beach.

“I feel more se­cure on the beach than any­where else be­cause it’s not many peo­ple here and the sun is hot, that is im­por­tant, “ Balka­ran said.

At that time, how­ev­er, there were ap­prox­i­mate­ly 20 peo­ple or so on the beach. Seem­ing­ly keep­ing with the Gov­ern­ment’s rec­om­men­da­tions, there were no in­di­vid­ual groups present larg­er than nine peo­ple.