63 Beach

63 Beach is a stretch of hard brown sand that meets the chocolate brown water at the junction of the Corentyne River and the Atlantic Ocean. The wind blows continuously off the water packing the sand, which is as fine as flour, into a surface nearly as flat and hard as concrete. Peering into the distance, one can just barely make out the black treetops on the coast of Suriname. Although not considered as picturesque as the white sand and blue water found in other Caribbean countries, the beach is a major tourist destination in Guyana. Every weekend, families park their minivans just out of reach of the waves and go for afternoon swims while behind them men in sports cars or on motorcycles race.

Caroline and I made our first trip to 63 Beach last weekend with a VSO friend who says he has made the journey “loads of times”. Traveling by minibus in early afternoon, we made our way from New Amsterdam curving north and then southeast along the coast, through Good Hope, Leeds, Benab, Village 62, and a variety of other small towns. The beach is not geographically far from New Amsterdam, only about 30 miles if one were to cut through further inland, but because the only road there hugs the Atlantic, our trip was stretched to over an hour and a half.
Unless one has a car or a lot of money, the preferred way to travel long-distance in Guyana is by minibus. Most of my students catch them daily to get to and from school, but for me, riding in one is more akin to playing an extreme sport. Although exhilarating, it is not something I want to do more than a few times in my life.

Minibuses can most accurately be described as sardine-can deathtraps on wheels. To maximize profits, the 15-passenger vans have been known to cram 30 or more people aboard. They travel at speeds upwards of 70 miles per hour on pothole-riddled roads, somehow negotiating cattle and feral dogs. The stink rising from 30 sweating bodies in the unconditioned cab is unsuccessfully masked by bundles of pine tree air fresheners hanging from the ceiling. Reggae music and horn continually blaring, complete strangers sit practically on each other’s laps using the noise to ignore each other.

Still, traveling for the first time by minibus was liberating for me. I finally felt like I was getting the true Guyanese experience. We averaged 24 people on our trip—as soon as one person got off at some middle of nowhere destination, another always got on. They always seemed to know exactly where they were going and how much they owed the driver, even though there seemed to be no clear system for calculating fares. Arriving at my planned destination and paying the correct amount felt like a success in itself.

From the edge of Village 63 we caught a ride in a Tapir, a small box-like van and the only automobile made in Guyana, to the middle of the beach. The three of us settled in a spot where a large log had fallen and hard wet sand met powdery garbage-covered dunes. Nearby, a dilapidated shack was dissolving slowly into the ground. We put down our things and scanned the horizon. A man and a woman were selling food and drinks from a light blue horse-drawn cart. My VSO friend and I bought a snack before Caroline and I braved the salty brown water.
Like every afternoon in Guyana, that Sunday’s was warm and pleasant. After swimming for a while Caroline and our friend built a sandcastle while I explored the dunes with my camera. The area around the beach is undeveloped, though a few small businesses have sprung up, calling themselves resorts. Where we had put our things, there was not even a road nearby. It was refreshing to be able to experience a little of the natural beauty of this country without the intrusion of car horns and loud soca music.

On our walk back to the main road to catch a bus home to New Amsterdam our friend stopped at a stand and bought a coconut. The milk from a coconut is a refreshing drink that tastes like thick lemonade. It is consumed straight from the husk, which has had the top hacked off with a machete. Tired and sun beaten, we at last caught a bus. I stared at the countryside until it was too dark to see.




A shadow has been cast over my day at the beach: on Monday, Caroline and I received an unusual text about remembering someone who had just died from a friend who lives across the street from our house. It was not until Tuesday, when we saw an article in the paper, that we made the connection between this poor kid and our trip to 63 Beach. Apparently, just as the three of us were leaving the beach, 16-year-old Vivian Singh and a 15-year-old girl he was there with were attacked. The two had stolen a watermelon from a field near the beach and were subsequently beaten by the farmer with a length of bamboo. The two kids were rushed to the hospital where the boy died of his injuries. Singh and our neighbor both graduated from New Amsterdam Multilateral Secondary, the school where I live.