Af­ter over sev­en months of be­ing closed, beach­es re­opened to the pub­lic yes­ter­day for sev­en hours— 5 am to 12 pm—and ac­cord­ing to the T&T Po­lice Ser­vice beach­go­ers ad­hered to all the Pub­lic Health Reg­u­la­tions and there were no breach­es.

At beach­es in north-west­ern Trinidad, flout­ing the laws was the last thing on any beach­go­er’s mind.

Joann Wal­cott came from Freeport to vis­it the bay by Al­coa in Care­nage with her daugh­ter. She said the re­open­ing was long over­due.

“Oh gosh it had been al­most two years, so we de­cide to take an ear­ly morn­ing, miss­ing it, we re­al­ly miss it,” she said.

It was a sen­ti­ment shared by the few peo­ple who vis­it­ed the beach­es along that coast.

“It’s re­al­ly fun and we can fi­nal­ly go back to beach­es…me and my friend were build­ing sand­cas­tles,” ten-year-old Amelia Stone said while leav­ing Mac­queripe Bay.

But bathing was not the on­ly ac­tiv­i­ty done at beach­es on Mon­day, as peo­ple were spot­ted fish­ing, hav­ing break­fast and in the case of Mar­jorie Br­us­co, us­ing the wa­ter for med­i­c­i­nal pur­pos­es—“to sap her aching back.”

“I fall down since last week by my broth­er, I prayed that Dr Row­ley open the sea be­cause this is the med­i­cine for every­thing. You tak­ing the in­jec­tion, every­thing is true, but this is the la­dy of the wa­ter,” she said.

None of the beach­go­ers had a prob­lem with the no al­co­hol or no loud mu­sic rule but they plead­ed with oth­ers to abide by the law.

“I was a lil wor­ried in terms think­ing there may be crowds, but there are no crowds. There is a wash­basin with soap and every­thing as you en­ter and the life­guards are here do­ing their part,” An­drea For­ge­nie said while at Mount Irvine Bay in To­ba­go.

But while the sea­wa­ter was missed for many rea­sons, for en­tre­pre­neurs who op­er­ate small busi­ness­es, peo­ple back at beach­es means mon­ey in their pock­ets. All just in time for Christ­mas.

One chow ven­dor told Guardian Me­dia that he took a dip on day one for the bless­ings and will be back to busi­ness from to­day af­ter a rough cou­ple of years.

“I did not sell or work or noth­ing. I lost my house last year it burn down with fire, now we come back and start over and COVID come and hit. Can’t work. no mon­ey com­ing in,” he ex­plained.

An ice-cream ven­dor at Mara­cas Bay said May’s lock­down caught him by sur­prise and what he thought would have last­ed three weeks, last­ed sev­en months.

“I didn’t have no set of mon­ey, I had about two thou­sand…I glad to­day how the beach open back so I could get some kind of Christ­mas mon­ey be­cause I was won­der­ing where I go­ing and get the mon­ey for Christ­mas,” Mar­shall Benoit said.

He ex­plained that the beach was the on­ly place he could sell, as peo­ple in the near­by vil­lage had the op­tion of vis­it­ing the ice cream man­u­fac­tur­er. Benoit hoped beach­es would soon open longer than 5 am to 12 pm, but for now, he plans on start­ing work ear­li­er.

Be­fore the clock struck 12 pm yes­ter­day, peo­ple at Mara­cas Bay were seen pack­ing up to leave.

“We look­ing to head out now,” Dale Ven­tour who came to cel­e­brate his sis­ter-in-law’s birth­day with his fam­i­ly said.

At ex­act­ly mid­day, life­guards used their whis­tles to call the few re­main­ing in the wa­ter out and min­utes lat­er the po­lice ar­rived to en­sure no one was de­fy­ing the rules.

Po­lice were al­so spot­ted walk­ing along Mount Irvine Bay in To­ba­go.

When con­tact­ed by Guardian Me­dia, the TTPS Cor­po­rate Com­mu­ni­ca­tions Unit said, “Ac­cord­ing to the Op­er­a­tional Com­mand Cen­tre, there were no ar­rests, charges, or de­tect­ed breach­es at the pa­trolled beach­es. Ad­di­tion­al­ly, there were no re­ports made to the po­lice re­gard­ing breach­es.

Beach­go­ers, from the in­for­ma­tion thus far, ad­hered to the Pub­lic Health Reg­u­la­tions.”