Cancun Today

Click on picture to enlarge Reuters photo by Victor Ruiz

The site of world-famous Mayan archaeological ruins, Tulum is located 110 miles north of where the eye of the Category 5 hurricane made landfall in the pre-dawn hours of Tuesday. And like so much of the Yucatan Peninsula that has been ravaged by countless storms over the decades, Tulum actually came out of Dean in surprisingly good shape. Electrical power went out soon after midnight and some tree branches were shorn off by the storm’s powerful winds.

The highway linking Tulum to Cancun was wide open by late Tuesday morning, and the only unusual sightings were convoys of Mexican army Hum-Vees and navy armored personnel carriers lumbering down the road in the direction of Chetumal.

Brendon Leach, 34-year-old native of New Zealand who opened the Mezzanine Hotel along the town’s shoreline four years ago, gives local authorities high marks for alerting the townspeople of Tulum in timely fashion about the need to evacuate seaside residential areas. “It’s been very well organized this time, there were regular e-mails and bulletins coming in and they had a car going around town announcing where shelters were located,” said Leach. “They’ve done a pretty good job of looking after people, and they’re already picking up the rubbish.”

Go to original by Joseph Contreras, Newsweek

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