Death Toll 37 in Mexico as Storm Heads Out to Sea : Disaster: About a third of nation is under state of emergency. Officials report 42,000 homeless.

Dave and Lori Dyer were changing planes in the Dallas-Ft. Worth Airport when they learned that they were headed for the same place that Hurricane Calvin was leaving: Acapulco.

“We just laughed,” Dyer said Thursday as he watched Mexican workers clear the seaweed, branches and rubbish from the beach outside their hotel here. “We went to St. Croix right after Hugo hit. That’s what we do for vacation. We follow hurricanes around.”

Calvin was downgraded to a tropical storm early Thursday, before it swept across the southern Baja California peninsula and out to sea again. But along the way, since Monday, it had reached wind speeds of up to 110 m.p.h., claimed at least 37 lives and, according to Mexico’s Defense Department, cost more than 42,000 people in 11 states their homes.

A state of emergency has been declared in areas covering about one-third of the country, with roads flooded, communications cut off and ports closed. Entire villages in the poor southern state of Oaxaca have been swept away by rains that accompanied the hurricane.

The Associated Press reported that heavy rains in many areas continued to hamper rescue efforts along the coast, from the Gulf of Tehuantepec north to Sinaloa state. Rescue agencies and the military ferried food and emergency supplies by helicopter to scores of communities cut off by mudslides and rockslides.

Thousands of acres of banana, coconut and bean crops were ruined and scores of pleasure boats were battered at their moorings in luxury resorts such as Huatulco, Manzanillo, Playa Azul and Ixtapa-Zihuatanejo, the AP reported.

Calvin hit first and hardest in Acapulco, turning a sunny day into a night of torrential rains on Monday. When the airport reopened Tuesday, cold and drenched tourists were clamoring to leave.

Like the Dyers, most of those who chose to stay as the world-famous resort dug itself out from under the ravages of Calvin are accepting their bad timing with a large dose of humor.

“I had planned to play tennis, swim and get a lot of sun,” said Steve Howard of Denver, who arrived Sunday, a day before Calvin did. “Instead, I did a lot of sitting around. Actually, it’s been very relaxing.”

The humor is a bit more strained across town at Pie de la Cuesta, an outcropping of land known for its spectacular sunsets. There, Calvin destroyed multistory concrete homes, thatched-roof restaurants and a hotel as it made its way up Mexico’s Pacific coast to Manzanillo, skirting Puerto Vallarta.

“The owner came by to see it this morning and left almost crying,” said Misael Gijon, manager of the seven-year-old, pink stucco Ukae Kim Hotel, where two huge waves swept away the restaurant, bar, pool equipment shed and two of the 20 rooms.

Normally, July 15 is the beginning of the busiest season at the hotel, which caters mainly to Mexican tourists, Gijon said.

“Who knows when we will reopen,” he said. “We have no idea.”

Next door at Casa Alberto restaurant, army troops were dumping wheelbarrows full of sand into the holes where the concrete floor had been. Soldiers who usually guard the beaches here have traded in their guns for shovels, helping to clear mudslides and repair private property.

Water was still a foot deep along parts of the Miguel Aleman Coast Highway, but generally life was returning to normal at the resort’s hotels: children frolicked on the beaches and adults sunned themselves by the pools.

The golf course at the Princess Hotel was still too soggy to play, but die-hard golfers were out on the driving range early Thursday.

Gene Lilley of Dallas was even gloating a little about his family’s decision to stay even as other hotel guests flocked to the airport.

“They ran out on paradise,” he said, gesturing toward the sun-swept beach. “A lot of people went back too quickly.”