CANCUN, Mexico – Along the narrow strip of sand that once housed Cancun’s raucous bars and palatial resorts, hotels are now stripped of marble and glass, their skeletal remains rising from a tangle of debris.
Cancun’s famous sugar-white sand is washed away, leaving a muddy coastline strewn with chunks of concrete.
The resort’s clear, sunny skies remain, but little of the Cancun where millions have honeymooned or spent spring break remains. The city lost battles to both Hurricane Wilma and looters, and it will take months to recover. Some say it will be Easter before things are back to normal.
Strolling along the hotel zone on Wednesday, I saw groomed resorts and postcard-perfect views replaced by shattered glass glinting from the pavement, reflecting the relentless sun above. Light poles were snapped like twigs, their wires snaking in all directions.
Thousands of tourists, desperate for a shower and a full meal, roam the city looking for a bus out or a plane home.
Picture windows were shattered and glass atriums capping the soaring lobbies of hotels collapsed in the storm, turning hallways into wind tunnels. Soggy furniture and debris littered reservation desks.
Awnings were ripped away, walls knocked aside. The storm’s waves gobbled up swimming pools and retaining walls, even washing over the marble floors of lobbies.
Instead of lobster dinners on restaurants floating in the city’s lagoon, people now wait in long lines for government-supplied rice and beans.
Cancun’s nightlife has been quelled by a curfew, and cars wait for hours to buy gas.
Cash, running water and electricity are scarce. Until my hotel fired up its generator on Wednesday, I hadn’t bathed in a week. Like many, I was running out of money, because the automatic teller machines weren’t working and banks weren’t open.
Hundreds waited to make calls home on pay phones, often threatening those who stayed on too long. One group of women screamed until they were hoarse, fighting over who could recharge their cell phones at a generator in a school converted into a shelter.
The roofs of shopping centers were peeled back, car dealerships were smashed beyond repair. Satellite television dishes, torn from their roofs, littered roads, parks and sidewalks.
Instead of the gardeners who usually tend manicured laws, Mexican soldiers hacked at the waterlogged remains of palm trees and branches with machetes. Police kept looters away from shattered businesses.
Car rental places, upscale clothing boutiques and restaurants such as the Outback Steakhouse and Senor Frog’s lay in ruins. But the flea market was nearly unscathed and was selling cheap trinkets hours after the hurricane had passed.
Despite the chaos, the people who lived through it – visitors and locals alike – were kind and patient and generous beyond description.
And that’s what I will take with me when I head home, and what will draw me back here when all the shattered glass is gone.
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