IDA Thought A Hurricane Would Be A Lot More Exciting

Hello all,

From the absence the past few weeks, you might think that I got swept out to sea in the great Hurricane Ida. Well, it was actually more or less the Hurricane-Ida-that-wasn't here in Isla Mujeres. Hurricane Ida was alternately predicted to hit us, or miss us...or hit us...or miss us...or, who really knows? These flip-flopping guesses left me and the rest of the island in a weird emotional flux of impending doom and extreme boredom for about 4 days.


Projections such as the one from "Stormpulse" above continually showed Isla Mujeres and Cancun right on the edge of the hurricane's projected path. It was just close enough to make you continually hit the "Refresh" button on the webpage to see if they had any further insights.

The weather was too bad to really excuse leaving the house much, with torrential rains passing through unpredictably. The little stores around the island were open (selling candles and canned beans), but nothing else was. The ferry service to Cancun was also closed for the weekend, due to rough seas. This was a bit disconcerting, being effectively trapped on a 1/2 mile spit of sand during a hurricane. The school was a safe location, however, and we lucked out that the driving force of the rain mostly hit the side of the school with no windows. We had very little flooding, unlike some of my friends who seemed to have rain flying in straight through the doors and windows.

Aside from the high emotion of the weekend and the torrential rain, there was another factor that really proved how close the hurricane was: the apocalyptic waves crashing in against the Caribbean side of the island. Since the school is only 2 blocks up from the surf, we had a front-row seat for drama of the high seas (sorry, full of bad puns this evening!). Just a few of my pictures from the school below.




Though most of the ubiquitous mopeds of the island were silent this weekend, a few "valientes" made it out through the rain, covered in yellow rain jackets.

As the hurricane came up through the Caribbean past Cozumel, it picked up strength and became a Category 2, with winds above 100 miles per hour. It was at that point that we boarded up our glass doors, just in case the wind would pick up any of the myriad dangerous objects lying around the neighborhood untethered. Once this was done, however, the cabin fever we were already feeling was exponentially exacerbated. Disregarding the rain and potential wind (since we could easily return to the house quickly), we decided the only logical step to curing our boredom was to go down to the edge of the hurricane along the beach (yes, we had already tried alternative methods, like multiple games of Scrabble).


Inside my room after boarding up the windows.

We walked down and found a perch to watch our live National Geographic-like program on natural disasters. We tried unsuccessfully to capture this footage for posterity (weak attempts provided below), and then ran into our friendly neighbors. Their brilliant idea was to go even closer to the water, in order to find the beautiful shells that the rough seas were undoubtedly providing. Obviously we decided to join in the fun, and went down right along the surf, which was admittedly much closer to the road than normal. We did find a few pretty ones, but mostly just marveled at the surreal-ness of the experience. I did, at one point, however, make a real misstep. The really big waves were here and there punctuated with a really, really BIG wave, which would swallow up the previously-safe spot you were standing in. I was standing near the surf, searching for shells, when a really, really BIG wave came. I braced myself as it sucked its way back out, and while bracing against one sucking out, a second really, really BIG wave came in, knocking my balance completely off-kilter. I went crashing down into the water with the second one, and came back out completely drenched! Oops...







I went back to the house almost immediately following, squeaking along in my squishy rubber sandals. I had to go out right past the huge Naval Guard trucks which had been dispatched to remove Isla's lowest-income residents from their cardboard homes, which would not withstand a real hurricane's force. Given that Isla Mujeres is the easternmost point in Mexico, there is a sizeable Naval Base here on the island, just off the center of town. But more on the Navy and "la invasion" (Isla's cardboard shack community) in a future post. At this point, I just wanted to let you know that Isla and myself both survived the great Hurricane-Ida-that-wasn't without too much damage or stress. The hurricane fortuitously passed through the Yucatan Channel between us and Cuba. There was no damage, and Isla Mujeres actually grew a bit, thanks to the huge waves throwing about 25 feet of sand to the western side of the island! Things are back to normal, and I'm looking forward to another post soon to catch you up to the holidays, schooldays, and random occurrences of life in Isla Mujeres, Mexico!