From the very young to the not-so-young, scores of peo­ple took to the beach­es on East­er Mon­day to en­joy the fi­nal day of the long week­end.

Mac­queripe Beach at­tract­ed a huge crowd of beach­go­ers and seabathers, in­clud­ing some who opt­ed to play foot­ball, cook or just re­lax.

While some peo­ple ad­mit­ted that Mara­cas Beach was their first choice, they said they end­ed up at Mac­queripe in­stead due to traf­fic. But they did not re­gret it.

One seabather, Ronell Joseph said, “To be hon­est I was go­ing to Mara­cas. I haven’t been to Mac­queripe for years … but the wa­ter is beau­ti­ful though, lit­tle sea­weed here and there but we en­joy the wa­ter... It’s been a won­der­ful ex­pe­ri­ence. The chil­dren are hav­ing fun, be­cause the wa­ter is a bit rough, the chil­dren tend to have a bit more fun. The weath­er is beau­ti­ful.”

Joseph was ac­com­pa­nied by his teenage son and his son’s friends and fam­i­ly in­clud­ing 12-year-old Ethan Phillips.

A cheer­ful Phillips said, “My day so far is re­al good, re­al good. I like the wa­ter. I feel re­al safe. I’m hav­ing a lot of fun. We even buried some chil­dren in the sand. It’s re­al­ly fun.”

Twen­ty-one-year-old Shenice Charles was al­so hav­ing fun.

Charles said, “At first we were go­ing to Mara­cas, but ... we de­cid­ed this was the best lo­ca­tion. I’m with my mom and cousins … This is my first time in many, many years com­ing to Mac­queripe … We have a lot of food, drinks and snacks and we’re just go­ing to have a great time.”

But, it was her cousin Leanne Lee A Ping who was left in awe.

“This is my first time. The view is just amaz­ing. I’ve ac­tu­al­ly nev­er seen any­thing like this in Trinidad, it’s per­fect,” she said.

One of the life­guards on du­ty, Roger Dwari­ka, es­ti­mat­ed there were about 1,000 peo­ple at the beach yes­ter­day. He said it had been in­ci­dent free for the en­tire long week­end.

Dwari­ka said, “Com­pared to last year, this is a se­ri­ous turn over we’re get­ting. For the four days, we had a lot of peo­ple on the beach ... We’re look­ing at 1,000 for the day and it’s a con­stant flow of peo­ple com­ing and go­ing, so it’s over 1,000 and more.”

While he said there were no in­ci­dents re­port­ed at Mac­queripe, he said one man had to be res­cued from al­most drown­ing at the Ch­aguara­mas board­walk.

As such, he cau­tioned par­ents to al­ways keep a watch­ful eye on their chil­dren at the beach.