Hurricane Odile Hits Home (away from home)

I’ve been visiting Los Cabos two to three times a year for the last decade. Both Carolyn and I had been there previously before we bought our little one bedroom vacation get away in San Jose Del Cabo. We were looking forward to another trip-to-the-tip in a few weeks.

I don’t watch or read the news often on weekends. So when I received an email from my sister Monday morning asking if the condo was okay because of the hurricane, I thought “of course, there’re always hurricanes this time of year.” To explain further: when you live in southern California and have relatives on the east coast, you get used to questions pertaining to your safety after the recent earthquake in northern California. Just the same, the tone of her email piqued my curiosity.

So I checked it out. Wow. What a gut cruncher. The images we’ve all seen are devastating. Almost a week later and I’ve heard nothing first hand. The HOA president of my complex–living stateside–was briefly in touch with my resort administrator on Thursday (until the line went dead). The Administrator reported extensive damage to glass, severe water damage, and that all of the palm trees had been stripped of their fronds. More importantly, a commonality for all of Los Cabos: NO electricity; NO gas; NO food; and most importantly NO potable water.

For those that don’t know the area, Los Cabos is like an island. Your choice: 1000+ miles over very rough landscape from the US border (impassable now), or a 16 hour ferry ride to get to the Mexican mainland. While the airstrip in San Jose is open for relief efforts even while the airport is closed, building materials will be a different animal. Getting those types of resources in to the area is a major undertaking.

Los Cabos is absolutely devastated. It’s their version of Sandy. Even worse, if that’s possible. The infrastructure is very weak. It’ll be quite some time just to get things operable–forgetting back to normal.

While hotel row features all-inclusive resorts with hundreds of upscale rooms each, most (non-gringo) locals live in one-room homes with dirt floors and corrugated tin roofs. They are quite literally dirt-poor. I can’t image how many local people who had little to begin with now have nothing. Must be tens of thousands. Yet the bulk of the reporting I’ve seen (which there’s been little of) has been in regards to inconvenienced tourists. “My vacation was RUINED!” Oh, the poor Americans. I’ve had conversations in the water with local surfers wanting to practice their English (and felt ashamed by my feeble attempts at Spanish). One thing many of them like to say is, “Somos todos Norteamericanos.” Rough translation: “We are all North Americans.”

Unless the drug cartels have created a bloodbath amongst themselves, or put a politician’s head on a stick in a remote village, the media does not consider Mexico worth reporting. World News Tonight as it pertains to the Norteamericano couch potato.

The people of Los Cabos need your help badly. If you have anything to share, please make a donation to a charity you know is trustworthy. Here’s a link to a video of the San Jose Del Cabo area. I know these streets well.

Cabo’s upcoming tourist season was shot dead before it started, but there is a definite upside for the locals. The Mexican government will find ways to provide financial initiatives to builders. Construction jobs will be plentiful and there will be many young men making their way west from Mexico City to claim their pesos. In a few months, during what would have been the height of the tourist season, Cabo will be loud with the noise of rebuilding. There will likely be a few tourists ambling about. Last-minute bookers looking for dirt-cheap sun. Only the curious ones, though. It’ll take some time, but in the end Los Cabos will be more impressive than ever.

Photo ©Ed Ward. Hurricane Rick bears down on Los Cabos, October 2009
Video ©Mike Arce