Cancún

The beach recovery teams are currently working in front of the Grand Melia Cancún (scheduled to re-open at the end of this month) and the CasaMagna Marriott (June 1st).

Jim Wehrle took this photo today from in front of the Palace hotel (no beach whatsoever). Looking south, the JW Marriott (May 1st) can clearly be seen… and in the distance, the earth moving equipment working the beach at the Grand Melia.

This photo shows the bulldozers working in front of the CasaMagna Marriott.

The second dredger - the Barent Zanen - has also now arrived, but I expect progress to slow a little as this stretch of the beach was washed away completely.

LP’s Ali Collier conducted a 20-minute telephone interview recently with Oregon-based Suzanne Plank, a contributing author to the popular Mexico guide.

You can download the podcast from their website.

Suzanne was in the region in Sept/Oct last year, researching for the guide’s 10th edition. The author is asked about her experiences "living through Wilma" (actually she fled to Campeche) and covers the region’s "miraculous recovery" since then.

No big scoop, but a good general intro / listen… with one caveat: Suzanne, the Sheraton hotel did not "collapse". The Resort building has been demolished to make way for the Westin Lagunamar, which will rise in its place.

Meanwhile, after a week of celebrations in Cozumel (and elsewhere), Michael Gerber has posted this set of carnival…

I’ve updated this page to take into account the speedy beach recovery to date.

Note that no timetable for the work has been made public, so these dates remain my best guesstimate.

Cancún’s beach reclamation project looks well on schedule to finish before April 30th, the ‘delivery’ date in Jan de Nul’s contract.

Lee Taylor took this photo (right) a few days ago during a brief sojourn at the Royal Islander.

I have to admit, I’ve become a beach recovery photo junkie. I’m no marine engineer [laughs], but I’ve found the whole spectacle… well, a spectacle.

Another photo

I do not think I’m the only one finding myself ‘lusting’ over "trailing suction" dredgers and earth-moving equipment [?]. Maybe it has something to do with the…

Hills of sand are already appearing in front of the Royal Islander as phase two of the beach reclamation project starts ahead of schedule.

Kudos to Royal Resorts as one of the very few to regularly post news updates online. Their website even features a short video of the beach recovery teams at work earlier this month.

Another photo.

Shortly after two o’clock this afternoon, the ferry Bahía del Espíritu Santo was finally refloated following a painstaking salvage operation lasting two and a half months.

Novedades reports that an all-Mexican team of 60 engineers had worked to free the vessel from where it wedged in the sands near Puerto Juárez.

The 2000-tonne vessel seems likely to resume ferrying passengers between Cancún and Cozumel at some point in the future.

I’ve been following progress since my January 12th post. I guess this should be viewed as another symbolic step in Cancun’s rehabilitation.

Jim Wehrle snapped this photo of the newly-widened beach in front of the Westin Resort & Spa yesterday afternoon (Feb. 19th).

The beach recovery crews have now moved on in the direction of Club Med. We reckon they are slightly ahead of schedule, according to our ‘unofficial’ timetable.

Jim can also vouch that Jan de Nul are working flat out. The dredger - the Filippo Brunelleschi - anchored right off the beach, close to where he lives… journeying back and forth during the night.

A second dredger is expected to arrive later this week, ready for the start of the second phase of the project.

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…

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.

"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…

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.