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After the season of fasting and penitence, for many in Mexico, Easter is a time for processions, altars, flagellations and realistic reenactments of the crucifixion.

Unrepentants flock to the beaches over Semana Santa (Holy Week) and Christmas, something I remember well when I lived on the Pacific coast of Michoacán.

Cancún will fill up this week, particularly from Thursday to Sunday. Many will bus in from neighbouring states, filling hotel rooms and the cinder-block rooms of friends and relatives in equal measure.

All in all, it’s an especially bankable time for taquerias and coctelerías and smaller restaurants in el centro.

Hotel occupancy and business fall off quickly the day after Easter, the end of high season.

There’s no question Tammy Chase is enchanted by Isla Mujeres.

Meanwhile, Maria de las Mercedes took the photo on the right… and some others of the books, beads and batiks at  "Cosmic Cosas".

The used bookstore and internet café established by Molly Fisher and Genevieve Pritchard is a popular Avenida Matamoros hang-out on Isla Mujeres.

Come on in the water’s lovely…

Chantelle Tucker captured the turquoise-blue Caribbean Sea at Playa del Carmen on March 26th.

View the complete photo set on Flickr.

Reminded me of the crystal clear breaking wave captured by Alejandro Mejía Greene in Cancún last month. 

24 hours later… Le Blanc now has a beach.

These guys sure work fast.

This stretch of the beach was wiped out by Hurricane Wilma. You can see what little remained in this photo taken just last week by Nancy McElroy, who is, alas, now back home in Michigan.

View a slideshow of Jim Wehrle’s before and after photos from April 4th and 5th.

The beach recovery operation has now reached the Le Blanc Spa Resort.

Approx. 1 – 1.5 km left to go (view a map).

Thanks to Jim Wehrle, who took this photo early this morning from the Royal Sunset. View a larger version.

Despite feeling slightly uncomfortable about posting this so soon after my last (deeply troubling) post, I just couldn’t pass up on this one.

World Hum’s "Theodore Fez" dishes out style advice to the Fox/Bush/Harper three-way Cancún summit.

Ellen and Jim Fields say more on their Working Gringos blog.

Kimberly Kim and Cheryl Everall, the two unlikely suspects in the murder of two of their fellow Canadians on the Riviera Maya have appealed to Prime Minister Harper to speak on their behalf with President Fox, reports the Toronto Star.

Domenico and Annunziata Ianiero were found in their hotel room with their throats cut on February 2oth.

Right: the front page of the Windsor Star for March 1st.

Newspaper editorials in Canada have slammed Mexican justice (a bit of an oxymoron) and even urged Canadian travellers to consider avoiding the country.

That would be sad… and serious for Mexico; the country is the No.3 destination (after the US and UK) for tourists from Canada. Canadians…

Franchise operation 100% Natural has a foothold on Fifth Avenue ("Quinta Avenida"), the main drag in Playa del Carmen (between Calle 10 & 12). It serves up veggie pastas & soups, and fresh fish, meat and poultry, which you can eat in their tropical courtyard garden.

Chantelle Tucker (a regular in my posts here) shares out all the wholesome goodness in this set of photos.

Just south of Playa is Ikal del Mar, with thirty beautiful, thatched villas, scattered throughout its lush grounds (the hotel prides itself on the fact that no trees were cut down during its construction).

Brighton-based Andy Budd was a guest earlier this month. Andy’s…

As Cancún continues to rebuild and reinvent itself, a new study sheds some interesting light on how the hurricane’s impact has been felt in the resort.

Overall, the number of tourists staying in Cancún has fallen by 10 per cent since the October storm. But it could have been so much worse.

An article [Spanish] in today’s La Jornada reports that researchers at La Salle University’s Institute of Tourism Research [website not available until April 3rd] in Cancún have identified that Mexicans themselves flooded in to nullify the slump in US visitors, whose numbers peeled back to a third of what they were before Wilma struck.

In the twelve months to January this year, domestic tourism…

Cancún’s rapid recovey from Hurricane Wilma is being held up as a role model for other destinations to follow.

The Secretary-General of the World Tourism Organisation (WTO), Francesco Frangialli said yesterday: "…the speed and efficiency shown in the recuperation of Cancún should be used as a blueprint for other countries facing similar threats."

Monsieur Frangialli is now in Acapulco for the annual “Tianguis Turístico” jamboree.

I would have to agree with the WTO’s assessment. Are you listening Mr Bush?

I think it was Theodore Roosevelt who said "Nine-tenths of wisdom is being wise in time."

Five months on from Wilma, I’ve detected signs that some people are beginning to wonder what may be in store this year. The hurricane season starts in June, which somehow suddenly now seems just around the corner.

Right on cue, Sean Mattson poses some questions about hurricane preparedness in Cancún in an article for the San Antonio Express. He remarks on how insurers have announced higher premiums and are now more demanding of construction quality. You may recall that I wrote about it in January.

As they say in the Caribbean…

"June too soon, July stand by,…

No, not the wall of sand that has preoccupied my posts recently, but the proposed 700-mile, $2.2 billion wall in the sand along a stretch of the US-Mexico border.

This thorny topic will no doubt find its way onto the agenda as President Fox prepares to host President Bush and Canadian Premier Stephen Harper for two days of talks in Cancún starting Thursday.

Guessing game

The venue of the talks remains a closely guarded secret, and as I reported last week, security has gradually ratcheted up.

The swanky Le Blanc Spa Resort looks likely to either host one of the leaders (most probably President Fox) or stage the summit itself.

Bush and…

Patricia Mitchell took these photos last week on Cozumel.

The El Cozumeleño resort only re-opened at the end of January, but Patricia commented on how the hotel had done "a remarkable job of rebuilding".

On the windward side (eastside) of Cozumel, the Chen Río beach is a peaceful place to stop and eat, and popular with locals (always a good sign). Take a taxi, or rent a car across the island.

Many visitors swear by the huge mixed platters of grilled seafood and simpler cerviches under the palapas at the Chen Río restaurant.

1. View of hotel pool from room 1901
2. Room with a blue-green view
3. El Cozumeleño…