Cuba's Endless Summer: Riding the Waves

Cuba has always had a romantic side from the birth of the Mambo and Cha Cha Cha to Hemingway's Islands in the Stream; Tropicana dancers strutting like glamorous birds and exotic cocktails toasting sultry nights.

Adding a new image to our winter dreams is a group of young women who have formed the Cubanita Surf Team. From their difficult beginnings, the girls decided to band together in October of 2005 to encourage and spread the sport of surfing amongst women. The Team now includes 9 members who hit the water on boogie boards, short boards and one long board. Most are students, either in high school or at university, and two are dolphin trainers at the Havana Aquarium. They are in touch with fellow surfers from Canada, the U.S., Spain, England, and Australia and are happy to receive gifts of board wax and old surf boards - with each new board going to a new surfer.

Surfing in Cuba is relatively new and started three decades ago with surf boards being fashioned from plywood planks. Now Cuban surf board makers, or "shapers" as they are called, toil in humid workshops in Miramar working with scavenged materials.

Surfers now number around one hundred with hot spots being along the north coast where ocean swells are pushed down by cold fronts from Canada. On occasion, hurricanes and tropical storms sweeping by the island will deliver ocean swells that transform into glorious 3 m waves