Wilma affects ship itineraries

PASSENGERS will have to skip Cozumel on their Caribbean cruises for the next several weeks and will find new ports of call on their itineraries, thanks to Hurricane Wilma, which hit late last month and damaged the piers at the Mexican resort island off the Yucatan coast.

Cruise lines say they will return to Cozumel as soon as possible. Until the piers are repaired, some lines, including Carnival, will send passengers in on tenders, smaller boats that shuttle passengers to the island.

Ships are substituting other ports or days at sea for Cozumel. Many are sailing to Puerto Costa Maya, which is close to the Belize border and was unaffected by Wilma. A Costa Maya representative says it is gaining about 100 ship calls as a result of the storm. It can dock three ships, and another can anchor and tender passengers ashore.

Wilma dealt only a slight blow to Playa del Carmen, south of Cancun. Ships already are calling there again; some are using it as an alternate to Cozumel. The port at nearby Calica was still being evaluated as of the Travel section deadline Tuesday.

Cruise lines say they are changing itineraries as needed. Most lines are posting updates on their websites.

Ships returned early last week to ports in Key West, Fla., which also was a Wilma victim. Port representatives said all three piers were operational. Tourism officials reported that most Key West attractions were open and some shops and restaurants were back in business, as they were most everywhere else along Wilma path’s in South Florida.

Airports mostly were back to normal in the region.

About 70% of the Fort Lauderdale area’s 700 hotels were open, though about 60 remain closed for repairs, said Nicki E. Grossman, president of the Greater Fort Lauderdale Convention & Visitors Bureau. The rest were waiting for power to be restored, she said, adding that most of the area’s attractions were open.

“We’re hopeful that by Thanksgiving our community can look back on Hurricane Wilma and not make daily references to it,” she said.

Nearly all hotels in Miami Beach and downtown Miami were open, the Greater Miami Convention & Visitors Bureau reported. Many attractions had reopened by the Travel section’s deadline Tuesday, but the Miami Metrozoo and Seaquarium remained closed, as was Everglades National Park.

Along the hard-hit Yucatan coast, many hotels were still closed, and cleanup continued. Mexico’s President Vicente Fox has pledged millions to accelerate reconstruction so the area could be ready for visitors by Dec. 15, the start of the tourism-dependent region’s busy season.

The U.S. State Department issued a public announcement on Oct. 28 that cautioned U.S. citizens “to carefully consider travel” to the affected regions of Mexico because of Wilma.

U.S. airlines with service to the region were cautious too. Continental spokesman Martin DeLeon said the airline had suspended service to Cancun until at least Saturday.

American is running three daily flights from Cancun to Dallas/Fort Worth and Miami until Dec. 14. It does not expect to begin scheduled service to Cozumel until Dec. 15. For ticketed passengers to those airports, the airline was allowing cancellations and changes to destinations until Nov. 29 and changes to reservations until Jan. 15. Other major U.S. carriers had also loosened penalties and changes to affected areas. The hurricane season officially ends Nov. 30.

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Times staff writer Vani Rangachar contributed to this report.