A video published on Facebook shows the complete ruin of the popular camping site Puerto Escondido, located in Santa Cruz del Norte, Mayabeque, and has unleashed a wave of pain and nostalgia among Cubans both on and off the Island.
The clip was recorded by the creator known on social media as "El creador cubano," who navigates through the rubble of what was once one of the most beloved recreational spots for Havana families: a few cabins still standing, an abandoned swimming pool, and an utterly dilapidated dance floor.
"Sadness, yearning, memories, memories of something that no longer exists," says the author with a broken voice as he walks among the remnants of the facilities.
"Here we have the dance floor from the parties we used to have here at night in the Puerto Escondido campsite. It's sad, it breaks my heart, darling. Look at that. And this is what's left," he adds.
In the description of the video, the message is even more direct: "My Cuba is stuck in the past, it's just a memory of what we once knew, of what we lived, the most beautiful memories of my childhood remain only in my mind. RETURN MY CUBA TO ME."
Puerto Escondido was inaugurated on July 6, 1983, as the first facility of the Northern Coast Complex of Mayabeque, located at kilometer 80 of the Vía Blanca. For decades, its cabins, swimming pool, dance floor, and access to marine caves made it a benchmark for popular leisure in Cuba, especially for workers and their families.
The abandonment of this camping site is not an isolated case but part of a systematic collapse of state recreational facilities that extends throughout the Island.
The San Pedro camping site in Artemisa went from 310 cabins in 2023 to just 242 in 2025, with cracked grounds and destroyed recreational areas. The Río Jobabo base was described as "a precarious sanctuary without water, without lighting, without campers, without life." Peña Blanca shows collapsed roofs and silent pathways.
The Río Cristal recreational complex in Havana, reopened in 2017 with an investment of 6.8 million pesos, appears in 2026 with empty pools and courts overrun by vegetation, despite the official newspaper Tribuna de La Habana stating in July 2025 that "progress was being made in its comprehensive recovery."
The official press itself acknowledged in March 2024 that the popular camps presented "a sad picture of glorious years reduced to filth, decay, and waste," although it did not hold the regime responsible for the abandonment.
Hurricane Rafael in 2024 worsened the deterioration of many of these facilities, but the structural causes are prior: decades of lack of investment, absence of state maintenance, and vandalism in neglected installations.
The Popular Camping System was established in 1981 with the declared goal of ensuring access for the entire Cuban population to rest and nature. Today, that project is largely a collection of ruins.
Meanwhile, the regime has registered a project with the Ministry of Foreign Trade worth $8.9 million to transform the site into an "International Camping Adventure Park Mirador de Puerto Escondido," although there is no evidence of any concrete progress in its execution, and the ruins continue to deteriorate before the eyes of those who once lived their best memories there.
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