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Sheltering from a persistent February rain, President Vicente Fox had a gloomy message for those hoping to hear a commitment to cough up the extra 160m pesos (US$15m) needed to widen the beach to fully 60m.

Fox adopted a ‘wait and see’ tone. "Let’s finish this phase first."

The president spent 35 minutes observing the bulldozers at work and a choppy sea from a vantage point within the boundary walls of the Sun Palace hotel. He waited (in vain) for the dredger to appear with the next load of sand.

Tourism Secretary, Rodolfo Elizondo Torres, director of Fonatur, John McCarthy, and a gaggle of state and local funcionarios, all accompanied Fox.

“Cancún está de pie”, exulted the president. Cancún is back on its…

In December I wrote of the tempest some holidaymakers’ unleashed against tour operators over their treatment before and after Hurricane Wilma.

Today, TravelMole reports that in the UK, the big operators face a group action "claiming they should not have been flown to Mexico in the first place and that once Wilma struck, not enough was done to help."

Solicitors Alexander Harris are representing (according to The Times) 284 customers who travelled to Cancún with MyTravel, Thomas Cook, Thomson, First Choice and Cosmos.

The number of claims for compensation rose sharply after the story was highlighted on ITV’s Tonight with Trevor McDonald programme last month.

Whatever the rights and wrongs of this case, it’s clear that the operators didn’t do enough over ensuing months to fend off the…

The first phase of Cancún’s beach reclamation project (El Mirador to Punta Nizuc) nears completion as the earth-moving  equipment and piping is moved towards the Westin (View a map).

Many thanks to Jim Wehrle who took these photos on February 13th and 14th.

I recommend that you browse through all Jim’s photos in slideshow format.

"A picture is worth a thousand words" sounds trite, but how about these images to infuse some sunshine into your day.

Ms. Sizzle and her party clearly had fun frocklicking in the turquoise Caribbean Sea and relaxing with a good book and a chilled beer on a perfect white powdery Tulum beach.

I’ve also just caught up with Derbyshire couple, Jason and Vicky Bytheway who flew into Cancún on the first post-Wilma Thomson flight out of Birmingham (UK), just three weeks after the hurricane.

Jason had great things to say about their fortnight at the Riu Tequila (Playacar).

"Whenever we recall our time in Mexico, following such a destructive act of nature," he wrote in an email, "we think of the local people getting on with their…

"More than 100 foreign and domestic journalists as well as tourism officials and business people who will [sic] take part in the fourth edition of the National Tourism and Communications Forum, held in Cancún from Feb. 8th thru Feb. 10th."

"Will take part…held…" Mixing tenses. The confusion is not surprising given the official press release from the Mexico Tourism Board was posted online on February 8th, the day of the event.

Why hold a tourism and communications forum and not let media know about the event in advance? Seems counterproductive to me.

Journalist friend Jon Clark did make it to Cancún and ruminates about the spring break market in an article published today.

This follows a recent piece in USA Today which quoted Steve Wright, who runs the…

Tulum escaped the worst of Wilma’s wrath.

In fact, the beaches even gained a few more metres of white powdery sand.

A good place then to escape the mid-winter freeze for a long weekend. 

Towle and Cassie Neu stayed at Cabañas Copal earlier this month; a couple of nights in a "Garden View" cabaña (#29), "not the best", according to Towle… followed by a switch to a "much better" "Sea View" cabaña (#17).

A maintenance crew was (still) resurfacing the Boca Paila Road (pictured) on February 6th - the day Towle and Cassie rented bikes.

The Neu’s have since returned to Minneapolis… and six inches of snow.

Cozumel mayor Gustavo Ortega Joaquín announced yesterday an investment of US$40m dollars to ready the island’s cruise ship piers for the next generation of even bigger vessels.

Ortega commented to journalists that the Punta Langosta pier in San Miguel de Cozumel would welcome the world’s largest cruise ship, the Freedom of the Seas, in June.

The 160,000-ton, 3,634-passenger vessel (pictured, right, at the Aker Yard in Finland) will be the largest cruise ship in the world when it debuts in May 2006.

Currently, cruise ships are mooring offshore and ferrying in passengers by tender.

It’s been a while since I said anything about the reconstruction work in Puerto Morelos, so this report from Robert Birce of the Alma Libre Bookstore is timely.

"Puerto Morelos continues to make easy progress," Robert writes.

"Hotel Ojo de Agua right on the beach suffered a lot of damage but re-opened in mid-December. They just put water in their pool in the last few days, so are now pretty much 100 percent.

"The beach continues to widen," Robert adds. The photo (right) was taken on January 29th.

"The Ceiba del Mar and Casita del Mar hotels are still closed however."

Pre-Wilma aerial view of the Ceiba del Mar

"Another hotel, Hacienda Morelos, will likely open by the end of February. The big all-inclusives, the Secrets…

A summary of the exchanges I’ve had with travellers over the past few days…

Dima Glushkov took this photo (right) poolside at the Riu Cancún on January 29th… "the colours of the sea were incredible," he says.

Katherine Welton wrote me a long email following her week-long stay at the all-inclusive El Dorado Royale from January 21st - 27th. The resort is located on the Punta Brava beach a couple of miles to the south of Puerto Morelos.

"With the exception of the palm trees, you’d never know that there had been a hurricane," Katherine wrote. 

Earlier in January, Rebecca Lupton stayed at the same resort. She echoed Katherine’s observations: "Roughed-up palm trees told the story [of the hurricane] to those who were looking for it,…

A couple of days ago, waves lapped against the hotel boundary wall. But yesterday it was the turn of guests lounging around the Crown Paradise pool to marvel at the fevered activity on the beach. 

The ‘Filippo Brunelleschi’ has been toing and froing between the area where the sand has accumulated in banks on the seabed, and Cancún where the vacuumed sand is pumped onshore.

According to Sunday’s edition of Novedades, the dredger makes five round trips over a 24-hour period.

Two bulldozers have the task of distributing the fresh sand uniformly along the beach - at a rate of 200 metres a day.

Cancún-based Grupo Anderson’s flagship restaurants Carlos ‘n Charlie’s and Señor Frog’s are magnets for tourists staying in resort.

Carlos ‘n Charlie’s, pictured here on January 22nd, welcomed back the punters two days earlier, while Anderson’s hope Señor Frog’s will re-open before the end of February.

Further down the coast in Playa del Carmen, the Blue Parrot Beach Club will be back up and partying today - minus palapa roof - following the fire that gutted the structure on January 20th.

The three Blue Parrot hotel properties - all of which are 100-300m from the Beach Club - were undamaged and have been fully operational since shortly after Wilma.

Sand, sand, glorious sand…

Jan De Nul’s managing director, Marc Verhaert, Mexico’s Tourism Secretary, Rodolfo Elizondo Torres and Quintana Roo state Governor, Félix González Canto, were all present at a brief ceremony held on Playa Delfines this morning.

At 10:30am, Cancún time, Elizondo symbolically dio el ‘banderazo’ - waved the flag - to signal for the sand pumping to start.

There was a momentary hush as the 22-inch pipe belonging to the Belgian maritime engineering group first spewed out a mouthful of murky water. This was quickly replaced by cheers and applause as the first recycled sand gushed onto terra firma.

Many thanks to Jim Wehrle who was on the spot shortly afterwards to capture these neat hills of ‘reclaimed’ sand along this section of beach, just…

February is shaping up to be a milestone month in Cancún’s painful recovery from Hurricane Wilma, despite a muddle over when some hotels will re-open.

An estimated six thousand hotel rooms will be added to the resort’s total available inventory over the next four weeks - a significant leap from the 13,179 open today (48% of the pre-Wilma total) to a much fitter 19,436 (70%) by March 1st.

However, I’ve uncovered further evidence today why ‘official’ pronouncements should be taken with a pinch of salt, and always verified.

Today, for example, the website of the Cancún Convention & Visitors Bureau (OVC) is showing that the Spanish hotel group Oasis will re-open all six its Cancún hotels on February 1st - five located along Cancún’s…