Still feeling blue after Wilma

THE water is still glorious shades of blue, but much of the beach is gone. The hotel zone is a mess. The nightclubs are silent.

For those who love Cancun, this is not the Cancun they love.

“Have you seen it at night? It looks very dark,” said Marcela Guisa, public relations manager for Le Meridien, one of the few functioning hotels along the Caribbean shoreline. “It doesn’t look like a live place.”

That’s because on Oct. 21, Hurricane Wilma moved into the Yucatan for 36 hours. Cancun is recovering, but it will be months before the city is itself again.

Most of Riviera Maya, the 80-mile coastal tourist zone south of the city, escaped serious damage, in part because Cozumel, an island in the Caribbean opposite Playa del Carmen, acted as a natural buffer. And Cozumel paid the price.

“Hold off coming for now,” said Raul Marrufo, director of the Cozumel Promotion Board.

On a weeklong visit that ended Dec. 2, here’s what I found:

Cancun: “We depend heavily on the beach,” said Rafael Vazquez, director of sales and marketing for the Ritz-Carlton Cancun. “Have you seen the beach?”

The beach along Cancun’s prime Caribbean shoreline is a relative sliver. Even the sliver is an upgrade.

“I was almost crying two days ago,” said Guisa, of Le Meridien, “because I saw sand. Finally.”

Nature is replenishing, but the process is slow. The government has plans to help it along. “The machinery that will be taking care of this is here,” said Patricia Lopez of the Cancun Convention and Visitors Bureau. Even so, she said, they’re looking at six months, minimum, before things are back to where they were.

The hotels? A few, including Le Meridien, are at or near full strength. Several are expected to reopen at least partially before Christmas. But most, including the two large Marriott properties (with a combined 900 rooms), are looking at February or later; the Ritz-Carlton may not be ready until summer.

The hotel zone looks ghostly. Senor Frog’s, the iconic restaurant-bar? A wreck.

The visitors bureau’s Lopez has a suggestion: “Explore Cancun on the side that hasn’t been explored. Downtown Cancun doesn’t have beaches or Louis Vuitton but does have good, functioning hotels and some of the city’s most interesting restaurants [La Parilla, the magical La Habichuela, Pericos] and liveliest bars.”

Puerto Morelos: Anything near the beach took a major hit at the fishing town that marks the beginning of the Riviera Maya.

Casita del Mar, once a cute little hotel, is a shambles. The elegant Ceiba del Mar lost one building and most of its palapa (thatch) roofs and probably won’t reopen until early summer.

The Puerto Morelos beach, protected by reefs, is what it was before the storm. But the beach restaurants near the square that passes for downtown are all but gutted, the old lighthouse may be beyond repair, and the fishing pier -- home to a fleet of boats that carried snorkelers to the reefs when they weren’t bringing in fish -- is a skeleton.

Playa del Carmen: “Wilma’s the best thing that ever happened to Playa,” said Daniel “Chi-Chi” Rodriguez, who touts timeshares there. “Because people who were going to go to Cancun -- they’re booking them here. And once they see Playa, they may never go back to Cancun again.”

Playa del Carmen was in Wilma’s path, but aside from a few shredded palapas, the place looks untouched. The hotels are working, the bars are merry, the shops are busy and so are the restaurants.

Down the coast, in Puerto Adventuras and Akumal, there was some isolated damage, but recovery has been quick. Even in Tulum, where many lodgings are little more than thatched huts, the main damage was to the thatch.

“Our total offering is 25,170 rooms,” said Martin Ruiz, director general of the Riviera Maya Hotel Assn. “On Jan. 6, we will have 95% of the total working.”

Cozumel: Battered. Big time.

Said Manuel Ortiz, owner of Studio Blue Dive Center and an instructor: “Everything is normal except for one thing: No tourists.”

Everything is not normal. The airport is operational and the small hotels in the island’s only town, San Miguel, are open. But the larger hotels -- all damaged, some severely -- will take longer. Until then, the island’s lifeblood will be cruise-ship passengers.

The world’s most active cruise port (1,307 arrivals in 2004, according to Marrufo, the Cozumel spokesman), San Miguel lost its dock to Wilma; 40 to 45 ships would stop here in an average week in late November and December, and that number has been cut in half. Passengers could be arriving by tender for at least a year.

At the cruise stop, almost all the stores are open. The golf course reopened a month after the hurricane passed.

Cozumel still has work to do. But for those who don’t need cable TV and turndown service, maybe Marrufo is underestimating what is already here.