Day 6 The end of Dean in the Merida area

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It's almost 10 p.m. now and Ali may have solved the puzzle of not posting. Going to try again. Cross your fingers!

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It's after 7 p.m. now and you're probably thinking that I've either been blown away by the Hurricane or I'm still under the bed with my eyes closed and don't know that the storm is over.

Neither is correct. I wrote the words below before noon and have tried to publish to no avail. I guess Travelblog had a glitch again. I wrote Ali about the non publishing but he hasn't gotten back with me.

Sooooo.. I will just put updates on this one until it publishes.

Let me tell you, the wind got mighty gusty around mid afternoon! Never had any more rain but it was blowing!! Everything calmed down around 5 and it was as if the hurricane had sucked all the air out of here. Real still, sticky and take your breath away hot. That lasted about an hour. Now everything is normal.

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Day 6 the saga continues

Merida, Yucatan, Mexico at 10:45 a.m.

Winds here are stronger than an hour ago. Nice and lots of sunshine! Helps my nerves which are raw from preparing for Dean.

www.weather.com has a news report online now that reads, in part: 'The resorts of Cancun and Cozumel have not felt the full brunt of Hurricane Dean but tremendous waves (on the order of 15 to 25 feet) are crashing along the shores resulting in severe beach erosion. Even as Dean emerges into the Bay of Campeche, there will still be squalls of tropical storm-force winds and heavy rains on the backside of the hurricane. Conditions in both Cancun and Cozumel will improve slowly during the afternoon and evening.'

I hope that all those tourists that had to leave their vacations do realize it could have been much worse and that there are still problems looming for the resort areas even after the hurricane has passed to the west.

http://www.yucatan.com.mx/ reported at 10:48 a.m. this morning that the 'Rural financier' has delegated $50 million weights (pesos?) to the areas affected by hurricane Dean. This money will come from the Program for the Attention of Zones Affected by Natural Disasters. Pretty cool to have a fund set aside for just disasters, huh? They apparently don't rob other funds when a natural disaster occurs.

The fund has standards and application levels, it appears, but in brief they look very fair (for areas needing capital to reconstruct, remodel and/or recondition facilities affected; credits of money can be for up to two to six years for capital work; had to have been in operation at least 12 months prior to the event, etc.).

And Mexico's president, meeting with President Bush and Prime Minister Harper in Canada, quickly headed home today (as he had said he would) to take care of his country first. Yeah, Presidente Calderon!

It is 12:30 p.m. Travelblog was doing a backup so couldn't publish earlier. Update on Merida weather. Clouding up and there are huge gusts of wind!!! Will try to take pictures of some trees, but don't know if I have this digital program installed completely. Installations on this little computer all are in Spanish (regardless as to the fact they were in English when I installed them on another computer) and every new program will fight with the antivirus software on here. Like a mini bullfight on the computer and I'm the red flag!

And we are now back to Alert Orange. That's good.

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Comments

[Khaki]

post-hurricane activity
watch and see how fast everything gets fixed. People often wonder why expats sometimes get so angry at the U.S. Its because we see things like this. If Mexico can be prepared, not lose any lives, and fix things immediately after a crisis – what’s wrong with the U.S.? Too many “coordinators” and not enough “get it done NOW.” Too many recovery contracts for their friends and not enough respect for the quality of life for citizens. So – we live in Yucatan and the folks back home continue to believe the propaganda designed to keep them from finding out that “here” is better than “there.”