Heya guys,
My wife and I have been in the Yucatan Peninsula for the last three weeks, and were scheduled to leave tomorrow (sunday) morning at 10:00am. We were spending the remainder of our vacation in Playa Del Carmen, just south of Cancun.
About 2am last night we were able to get our tickets changed to get out today (my wife and I had to split up on seperate flights going to different places). We got 2 of the last 3 seats on any flight today leaving for anywhere in the US. After us, there was a single seat of about 30,000 that left. It sounds like no flights may leave tomorrow.
They have been recording 155mph winds, and it is heading right toward playa del carmen and cancun. It's going to decimate pretty much everything in it's path.
Quite honestly I can't believe we got out. I'm sitting back at home at my computer in stunned silence, running on about a half an hour of sleep. The woman that sat next to me on the plane paid $1400 for a one way ticket out. Most of the tourists in Playa hadn't yet figured out this morning how bad things were yet. I suppose I can't blame them, it looked like any other sunny day in Playa. I didn't have the heart to tell them as we left since there was nothing they could do. They might as well enjoy the last day of sunny weather before the military shows up to start evacuating them to the emergency shelters. Some of the brighter tourists seemed to start getting it though. The giant frameworks being welded together over the front of the shops was probably a decent clue. I imagine all too late they realized that they should have been trying to get the hell out of mexico instead of partying at the bars the night before.
We caught the first bus out to the airport, but there were already hour long lines and waves of people coming in after us. Note that if you know a hurricane is coming, it may be wise move to just eat the taxi cost and get out to the airport at the earliest possible convenience. It turned out ok for us, but I think I would have been happier sleeping on the floor of the airport behind the security fence than worrying on the way there that "if the bus breaks down we are seriously FUCKED".
At the airport, people were showing up trying to get tickets to anywhere in the US and even Mexico and Canada at the door, and all were being turned away. People panicked as they got to the airport realizing that an hour and a half wouldn't even get them through the ticket lines, let alone security and to their terminal. Lines grew past their designated areas into a mishmash of people that spanned across the entire airport and out the other side. Tempers flared.
I think I should probably get some sleep. Wow. We are alive, we are safe. We are incredibly improbably lucky.
Nite_Hawk
My wife and I have been in the Yucatan Peninsula for the last three weeks, and were scheduled to leave tomorrow (sunday) morning at 10:00am. We were spending the remainder of our vacation in Playa Del Carmen, just south of Cancun.
About 2am last night we were able to get our tickets changed to get out today (my wife and I had to split up on seperate flights going to different places). We got 2 of the last 3 seats on any flight today leaving for anywhere in the US. After us, there was a single seat of about 30,000 that left. It sounds like no flights may leave tomorrow.
They have been recording 155mph winds, and it is heading right toward playa del carmen and cancun. It's going to decimate pretty much everything in it's path.
Quite honestly I can't believe we got out. I'm sitting back at home at my computer in stunned silence, running on about a half an hour of sleep. The woman that sat next to me on the plane paid $1400 for a one way ticket out. Most of the tourists in Playa hadn't yet figured out this morning how bad things were yet. I suppose I can't blame them, it looked like any other sunny day in Playa. I didn't have the heart to tell them as we left since there was nothing they could do. They might as well enjoy the last day of sunny weather before the military shows up to start evacuating them to the emergency shelters. Some of the brighter tourists seemed to start getting it though. The giant frameworks being welded together over the front of the shops was probably a decent clue. I imagine all too late they realized that they should have been trying to get the hell out of mexico instead of partying at the bars the night before.
We caught the first bus out to the airport, but there were already hour long lines and waves of people coming in after us. Note that if you know a hurricane is coming, it may be wise move to just eat the taxi cost and get out to the airport at the earliest possible convenience. It turned out ok for us, but I think I would have been happier sleeping on the floor of the airport behind the security fence than worrying on the way there that "if the bus breaks down we are seriously FUCKED".
At the airport, people were showing up trying to get tickets to anywhere in the US and even Mexico and Canada at the door, and all were being turned away. People panicked as they got to the airport realizing that an hour and a half wouldn't even get them through the ticket lines, let alone security and to their terminal. Lines grew past their designated areas into a mishmash of people that spanned across the entire airport and out the other side. Tempers flared.
I think I should probably get some sleep. Wow. We are alive, we are safe. We are incredibly improbably lucky.
Nite_Hawk
