The Light at the End of the Tunnel

After starting Monday with yet another wonderful fresh fruit breakfast, we all piled into the car to take Josefina to the bus stop so she could go to work. There was a problem with that though...most busses in town were being used for a variety of other tasks like moving evacuees to other locations and getting disaster clean-up crews to the areas that need the most attention...which meant there wasn't a bus available to take her to work. Jose and Josefina decided it would be best to drive her to work. The Moon Palace was on the other side of the airport, so it took quite a while to navigate still-blocked roads to get over there. We dropped her off and started driving back toward downtown Cancun. As we drove by the airport, we saw a plane take off...the first plane we had seen since Wednesday evening (very reminiscent of 9/11 when no planes were in the air for a couple days). The plane had no commercial airline markings, so it was more than likely a government plane. It was our first sign of hope that maybe the airport was getting to the point of reopening. As we continued to drive, we saw several "Greyhound-type" busses filled with tourists headed out of town. We didn't know if they were just being shuttled to a new shelter...or headed to Cancun airport...or being transported out of Cancun to a location that had a functioning airport. At that point, we simply didn't know.

We got back into town and made our way through the maze of water-covered (yes, some still had water over them) and debris-filled roads when we drove by Costco and saw a Coca Cola delivery truck parked in parking lot with several people around it. One thing rapidly came to mind...water! Jose had an empty five gallon water jug in the trunk of the car and once we realized what was available, Jose parked the car, and we all jumped out of the car and ran across the parking lot. Thankfully there was still plenty of water to buy when we got there. We got our jug refilled and made our way back to the car. It didn't take long for a mob to grow around that delivery truck and we were fortunate we got our water and got out of there.

It was early in the afternoon by the time we made it back to the house. With the sight of the airplane and the tour busses, Amanda and I thought it would be a good time to go back to the school and see if anyone there knew anything new. We walked over to the school and were greeted with an incredible sight: Evacuees with their luggage! To anyone else, that wouldn't be that big of a deal, but remember...we all had to leave most of our luggage at the hotel when we evacuated. This meant several things: One, the road to the hotel was open! Two, the hotel was open! Three, everyone we talked to said the hotel was in good shape and the rooms (and the contents of the rooms) were just fine! We found out later that some people paid taxi drivers as much as 80 U.S. dollars one way to get their luggage! We went back to the house to let Jose know that the road to the hotels was now open. But before we could go, there was some unfinished business to attend to. The family had a turkey in the freezer prior to the hurricane and now that it was completely defrosted, they decided to cook it for the people at the school. The turkey had been cooking since mid morning and was done by the time Amanda and I came back from the school. Jose said he would take us to the hotel once we had given the turkey to the evacuees at the school (See what I mean about Jose being a really generous guy!). All of us (Jose, Coral, Ambar, Amanda, and I)went over to the school with bucket full of turkey and gave it to the people who hadn't had much to eat recently (evacuees from other schools were now being bussed over to this one and they didn't get much food while over there). While at the school one of the FunJet representatives told me that a bus was going back to the hotels in just a little while so people could get their luggage and it was leaving really soon. Amanda and I were ecstatic! We were finally going to get the rest of our clothes and money!

We jumped on the bus and made our way toward the Hotel Zone. The damage we saw was in many instances worse than what we had seen in downtown Cancun. Here's a picture of Fat Tuesday, a popular club/bar in Cancun...as you can probably guess, the water covering half the building is not normally there:

Down the road, we came upon a business that was very near our hotel. The business didn't quite make it through the hurricane very well

Here's a picture of the exterior of our hotel. As you can see, it made it through pretty well with only a few blown-out windows:

We exited the bus and let the people at the front counter know who we were. They told us to go up to our rooms, get our stuff, come back down, and turn in our keys. We climbed eight flights of stairs and walked down the hall to our room. We turned the key (thank God they had manual keys and not those electronic key cards) and entered our room. For the most part, the room was in pretty good shape. There was about a quarter of an inch of water on the floor, but the sliding door to the balcony was totally fine. We stepped out onto the balcony and got an eyeful from the hotel next to us. See for yourself:

I did my best to do a "Before and After" shot of the coast. A few things to notice as you compare the two pictures...check out the lighthouse in the middle of the picture, notice what happened to the two piers, and also see what happened to the straw umbrellas in the lower right corner.
We gathered up all our belongings, made our way back down the stairs, and boarded the bus. The bus stopped at one of the other hotels before we headed back to the school. At the school, our FunJet representative told us to be back at the school at 7:30 the next morning (Tuesday morning) and we would be boarding a bus to go to Merida, a town with a functioning airport about 4 hours due west of Cancun. Amanda and I took our luggage back to the Haro Diaz household, had dinner with them, and laid down to sleep for our last night in Cancun. The next day would be our day to get out of Cancun and Mexico, but it didn't end without a few more tense moments. The story of our final day in Mexico is next. Stay tuned...