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Published: March 10th 2007
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Washed away sand
This shows just how bad the hurricane was - all that is left of the beach in most places is a shelf of sand. Blogger Bec Thought we{d better check out what all the fuss was about - boy, what a spectacle this whole spring break business is!
Check out the videos for a tiny, wheeny snippet of the beach action!
Go you good things!!
If I was back in my uni days, I would be RIGHT HERE making a nuisance of myself. Sadly, I now have Grandmother tendencies and simply walk past all the very scantily clad young lasses, shaking my head wistfully, thinking of the days when my boobs sat as high as that.
(Christ, and I'm only 27, what the HELL is wrong with me?!?)
We had a lovely little sleep in and then headed out to the Hotel Zone (a.k.a Little America) on the local bus and waited until almost the last stop. We then walked over 10km along the beach checking out all the hotels and watching the spring breakers play up for the MTV cameras.
The surf was up so we couldn't swim which was highly annoying as we were really hoping for a chance to actually get into the water - haven't had an ocean swim since Caye Caulker!!
Instead,
Wilma's wrath
An example of a hotel that never got fixed... we treated ourselves to a set of brand spanking new snorkelling gear - the best our limited budget could buy. In the end, we spent over $200 but we got a good brand (US Divers) using the best materials. We figured that based on the cost of hire in Caribbean, based on the Bible, L.Planet, we would only have to go out 3 times before we made our money back. Plus we can take them on honeymoon to Fiji and then all over Asia, or wherever we end up on the beach next!
I can't remember if I talked about the hotel zone from when we were here prior to the tour starting so I'll just go over it again in case.
Basically, Cancun is two cities - the downtown and the Hotel Zone. The Hotel Zone runs along a strip of beach that goes for about 15km or so and juts out from the mainland with a large lagoon seperating the two land masses. The 15 odd kms are door to door, cheek by jowl hotels, mostly 4 and 5 star. In fact,
The far end of the beach!
This is where we started our big walk from -a yukky day but great for walking, no sunburn! hotels are all inclusive and at the moment, FULL of college kids from America and Canada on their spring break.
Cancun, and Hotel Zone in particular, is a spring break favourite as beer is cheap and so are the people themselves. Everyone here is here simply to party. It creates a great vibe.
The days are spent lying on the beach soaking up the rays and the nights are spent showing off tanned bodies with as little clothing as possible. Pretty much, if you are a girl and you have a tan, all is forgiven, you can shake it with the best of them.
Sadly, the once grand hotels that are bursting with tourists are in various states of (dis)repair after Hurricane Wilma in October 2005. When I went out to HZ before the tour, I just assumed that hotels had gone out of business and left the buildings to rot. It was really sad and I just didn't get it. Now I do. You can see by the pictures how much damage was done, and it is almost 18 months after the disaster. Obviously only the big chain hotels like Hilton, Le Meridan etc could afford
Dream house
I simply love this big ole mansion, it's so hodgepodge. It feels like a kid designed it, just tacking on rooms and balconies all over the place. Suits me just fine! to get their places back up and running quickly.
Not only the hotels were affected - the beach was almost completely washed away. No doubt to appease their customers, most hotels had to ship in sand to actually create a beach. Given everything that happened, it is fabulous to see the area back on it's feet and I apologise to Cancun for bad mouthing it last time!!
We were pretty zonked after such a big walk so we headed back to camp and had an early night. I'm completely obsessed by my latest trashy holiday read so I was pleased for an excuse to curl up early!