We had a great party here last night. Everyone was sequestered, so we gathered in the kitchen with drinks and snacks and chess and cards and a guitar. The wind got kind of strong, especially between 3 and 5 in the morning, and the windows and doors were shaking a little bit, there was a fairly quiet howl, and there was a lot of rain blowing through the building (the semi open courtyard). Our lights went out a few times, but never for very long. I haven’t been out yet this morning, but things inside here are fine. The palappa is fine, the windows are fine, and things look fine through the window. I’ll take pictures later today.
Last Minute Photos August 20, 2007
I just added a few more photos to my Pre Hurricane Dean photo set over at Flickr. Click here to see them all.
The winds are starting to pick up. The state mandated seclusion has begun (everyone has to be inside somewhere or they get arrested). We have some high level state and city officials staying with us tonight; I guess this really is one of the nicest and safest places in the city to be. I’m going to go stay in the room of a friend of mine so that someone can have my room. Hopefully they don’t eat all my food! The weather is still okay, though. Just some wind and some waves on the beach (which is pretty rare). I even saw someone windsurfing a couple of hours ago. Que loco. Spirits are high here, though, as we’re expecting to only get hit tropical storm strength winds. I’ll take pictures of our hurricane party tonight and hopefully post them in a couple of days.
Here we go… August 20, 2007
We’ve come back from class and are all safely inside the Residencia. We’re having a last meeting (we’ve been having update meetings every morning and evening) at 4 pm and then we’ll be continuing to bag up our things and tape up our rooms. It’s amusing to me that they’re having us tape our windows. Many windows in town are taped as well. More are boarded or shuttered, but I’m surprised by how many are taped. I was pretty sure (and still am) that taping did nothing. They’ve said that they expect a lot of water will seep into everyone’s room, so I’m bagging up all my books and this computer and my clothes and putting them on the top shelf of a protected cabinet in my room. Let’s hope my computer makes it through safely!
Luckily for us, this morning’s path is still holding, so we should be a good 100 km north of the centre of the storm. I’m very thankful that this will be just a minor blip for us and not devastating. I just checked the radar and it looks as if there’s a storm band heading our way right now, so I’m going to hit post and take a shower before our electricity is cut. I have every expectation that we’ll be very safe here, but it is still possible that I won’t have power for a day or two afterwards. Catch you on the flip side.
Looking good for us August 20, 2007
This morning, it looks likely that Dean is heading south towards Belize and Chetumal. This is a good thing for Playa; we might completely miss the hurricane strength winds and instead get the arms. Which I think is more exciting, because, well, not only do you not get hit by hurricane force winds, but you get the crazy fast moving intense thunderstorms followed by relative calm and you can actually look out the window at how fast the clouds are moving. There’s something about the really fast moving clouds on the outer edges of hurricanes that I just love. There’s electricity in the air; it almost tingles. The air is fresh, the wind is cool.
We’re carrying on here in a fairly normal fashion. All the CELTA students are going to class this morning. I’m not sure what we’ll be doing. Mornings are usually when we have English students and either practice teaching them or observe someone else teaching them. This morning we were meant to watch one of our experienced tutors teaching them. But I’m pretty sure we won’t have any students. A lot of them have gone to Merida. The one that I know has stayed is the chief editor for the Quintanarooense, the local newspaper, so I’m sure he’s pretty busy. A classmate of mine took him out to breakfast the other day (as a thank you for some help he gave her) and while they were in the restaurant, the governor of Quintana Roo and the mayor of Playa came in, so he had to go get what he could from them. So I’m not sure what we’ll be doing today. All I know is that we have to go to class. They’re also saying we will have class tomorrow morning. We’ll see about that. Maybe since the storm is at night we’ll be able to sleep and then go to class? Personally I think they’re being optimistic, but I suppose it depends greatly on how much of the storm we actually do get.
This afternoon, after class, I’m bagging up all my electronics and clothes and books and then moving to a second floor room.
Some photos August 19, 2007
Click here for some photos of Playa del Carmen taken just a few minutes ago (as well as a couple taken last night).
As you know, Hurricane Dean is meant to hit the Yucatan sometime tomorrow night. Preparation in Playa is really good. The government closely monitors things to make sure that most tourists are evacuated, all the beach front hotels are shut down, and the supermarkets have plenty of food and water and they aren’t price gouging.
Today, there was an odd mixture of activity on the streets. Well, on the tourist street, at least. Most things north of Quinta Avenida are closed already; I think some people have left to stay with family in Merida, so shopowners either aren’t here or don’t have the staff to be open, not to mention that there aren’t nearly as many shoppers around. But down on Quinta and the side streets around there, there’s a strange mixture. First there are the work crews who are out taking down everything that might possibly move: awnings, light fixtures, signs (many street signs near the beach have been taken down), thatch. Many shops are in the process of moving everything off the floor and cutting and putting up plywood. There are all of these USian or European shop owners standing around monitoring the progress. This is interesting to me because I hadn’t thought about who owned all the shops, restaurants, and hotels on the beach. They’re all staffed by Mexicans (and the occasional beach bum student from Argentina) but all of the owners appear to have a first language other than Spanish. Then, there are some stores and restaurants that are open as if nothing is out of the ordinary. They are still filled with tourists and the staff are still dressed in the often-ridiculous “native costumes” that the white owners require them to wear. There are definitely fewer tourists than there were three or four days ago, but there are still way more than I would have expected. I’m not really sure where they are going to be or what they are going to do. Looking at them I don’t know if they’re even aware of what’s going on. But surely all the hotels have notices in them, probably both in English and Spanish? I haven’t seen many tourists at all in the grocery stores. The few I’ve seen have had carts full of beer and limes (I mean full; probably 250 cans of beer and 30 limes) and a bag or two of crisps and possibly a two liter bottle of strawberry soda. No water, no tuna or bread, no batteries. Not even wet wipes.
The really different thing today were the sounds. Usually you hear either “traditional” Mexican music or Europop and the shopkeepers and restaurateurs are heckling you to buy a hammock, try their food, or get your hair braided. When you walk down Quinta, someone calls out at you every ten or fifteen feet. But today sounds different. The music is modern Mexican pop, because the workers want to listen to what they actually like while they work in the heat on a Sunday. Most of the shopkeepers are silent or chatting quietly to their friends. Only one person called out to me today and it stood out so much because the rest of the street seems so quiet. And it is quiet. I don’t know if there’s actually less noise because there are a number of people and radios and cars still out there. I think maybe the noise isn’t traveling as well; perhaps the atmosphere is absorbing it? Well, quiet except for the omnipresent sound of hammering. Wherever I walked today, there was hammering. A constant banging.
I’m going to try and write something again tomorrow before the electricity is cut. We’re predicting it’s going to go off by 5 pm (-5 UCT) and at that point I won’t have internet anymore. Leave a comment if you come by here and either want to wish me well or have some question to ask about pre, during or post Dean. I’ll be your personal man on the spot journalist.
Hurricane Dean: The Run-up August 18, 2007
So, there’s this Hurricane. His name is Dean. Right now he’s devastating Jamaica. But, all the computer models currently show him heading straight towards me. He’s due on Monday night or early Tuesday morning (why do they always seem to hit in the middle of the night? haven’t they ever heard of sociable visiting hours?). The governor of Quintana Roo (my state) has declared a State of Emergency. It’s funny how the scenes in town right now are exactly the same as they would be Florida. There’s no bread or canned tuna on the grocery store shelves. People are buying shopping carts full of bottled water. There’s no plywood or flashlights to be had anywhere in Playa. The Mexican military is in town, walking through the streets and making sure everything is in order. Shops and restaurants are starting to close and there’s plywood going up over windows. There are a lot of building sites and half built buildings in Playa, and there are more workers on these today on Saturday than I’ve ever seen before. There are whole teams of construction workers scouring every site: taking down scaffolding, breaking down work stations, cleaning up every bit of debris they can.
Personally, our school has decided to close for Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday. They have tried to evacuate many of the Spanish students, and the rest they are moving into the Residence (there are people sleeping all over the place). If we get a direct hit, the military will impose a strict 24 hour curfew where no one is allowed outside at all. So we’ll all be hanging out in the Residence for a day or two. None of the CELTA students are leaving. We were actually told to stay because we’ll still have class, just here in the Residence instead of at the school. We even still have our assignments due on Monday evening. I hope we get a little leniency on the neatness of our assignments: I doubt I’ll be able to find an open internet cafe to print mine out so they’re going to have to deal with handwritten on notebook paper.
I’ve been watching Dean approach for a few days now, so I’ve been expecting this. I also have seen hurricane prep before, and I have a good idea what it’s like during and after. But most of my classmates are British. When they first heard there was a storm coming, they were pretty excited. Then, when they told us to go buy bottled water and nonperishable food staples and take extra cash out of the ATM and maybe get some wetwipes because not only will we not have power to run our a/c or fans, we also won’t have running water and won’t be able to take showers or even wash our hands, then they started getting kind of freaked out and thinking that maybe this wasn’t going to be so much fun after all. I really don’t understand how, what with the major news of Katrina a couple of years ago plus the odd devastating hurricane that breaks into the English news media, they thought that they would be fun or exciting, or somehow at least not unpleasant and slightly difficult. I’m kind of glad I’m around because I’ve been able to give people tips like “Go to a Florida hurricane preparedness website; you’ll get lots of good English language info on what you need to do/buy,” or “Try the Weather Underground. They have really good up-to-date hurricane coverage.”
Anyway, wish us luck down here. I’ll be contactable for a couple more days but they’ll probably shut down the power sometime Monday afternoon, so don’t freak out if you can’t reach me. We’ll all be fine, just without our internet and cell phones.
