Deliver Us From Swedish Furniture

Hurricane Dean hits Playa Del Carmen

I have very fond memories of Playa Del Carmen, it’s where I learned to dive under the supervision of some very strict, but amiable, Swiss instructors. I didn’t realise how much of a rarety amongst dive instructors this was, but since then the majority of the instructors and dive-masters have been so slack or obnoxious. When I went over to Cozumel I was presented by one that was obnoxious, slack and impatient, I wonder if people like that ever think they might be in the wrong job? Anyway I digress, when I was last there, about 5 years ago, we arrived there just after they had been hit by a big one then. This time Playa Del Carmen escaped the worst of it, but where it swept inland it caused all manner of devastation. We headed up to Meride and were apparently some of the first tourists there since the storm, which was less to do with our intrepid nature and more to do with the lack of tourists left in the area. They had just got power and water back on and the number of houses missing a roof (and some missing much more!) was an amazing homage to the pure power of the storms that rage in around there. The people were gradually getting things back to normal, but the shops and restaurants were almost bare as almost nothing had been delivered for weeks.

It does put into perspective our complaints about how crap a summer we’ve had over here in the UK though doesn’t it….!