Cancun, rebuilt and showing off

SEEMINGLY, all is bueno here on Mexico’s sunny, sinny Caribbean coast, a year after Hurricane Wilma bore down for a three-day weekend like some party girl who wouldn’t leave.

In the Hotel Zone, the ribbon of resorts along Cancun’s beachfront, innkeepers have been on a spending spree, adding presidential suites and tennis courts, flat-screen TVs and more shore than ever before to its world-renowned beaches.

Along Kukulcan Avenue, 6,000 freshly planted trees sway to the billowy tropical breezes that seldom rest. (Think Rachel Ward wrestling with her hair and skirt in the movie “Against All Odds.”)

And diners are again ordering pork chop Milanese at La Dolce Vita or the buttery broiled grouper at Lorenzillo’s, where customers pause on their way out to feed the 10-foot crocodile that swings by almost every night for a little late-night bite.

For decades, travelers have come to this glitzy peninsula, 640 miles due south of New Orleans, for its guilty pleasures and remarkable setting, the Yucatan jutting out so far into the gin-clear Caribbean that you can almost smell Castro’s cigar.

And a year after a Class 4 hurricane swallowed the beaches and tore open some of the nation’s priciest hotel rooms, all is well here in Cancun and the sprawling resorts to the south and east.

Or is it?

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Guests will return

THERE is no heat like a tropical heat, a warm cup of coffee down the back of your neck, but I am not the only one to have broken a sweat here. Roman de la Cruz melts a little as he describes cowering for three days in a cottage as Wilma skidded to a halt, held in check as if by the devil’s thumb.

“It got here and just stopped,” recalls De la Cruz, 46, who has seen other hurricanes come and go, usually in 12 hours. “All I could do is stay in my cottage.”

Remarkably, no one died in the storm that caused hundreds of millions of dollars in damage. But when it finally left, so had those magical beaches and something else vital: As they were with New Orleans after Katrina, tourists were wary of visiting during the next hurricane season, June through November.

It left tour promoters such as De la Cruz in dire straits and the little vendors at Market 28 in the city’s core suffering for customers.

“It was the worst summer I can remember,” De la Cruz says.

The cabbies, tour promoters and bellhops are now sweating the prospects for the coming tourist season, which begins in earnest in late December. Will the uber-rich return to the luxe shopping malls and five-star resorts that line Kukulcan Avenue? Will the college kids guzzle their way through Dady’O, Bulldog and the other steamy clubs at the north end of the island, where parties once lasted till dawn?

Indications, so far, are yes. Innkeepers say winter bookings are encouraging and that once the threat of hurricanes eases, guests will return, unfazed by the little things forever changed by the 145-mph winds.

Like the sand. Wilma washed away most of the sand on the east-facing beaches, leaving hotels and timeshare owners with an empty feeling. Cancun has plenty to offer, but without a beach, it’s like Switzerland without the Alps.

In came Belgian company Jan de Nul. Half a mile at a time, it replenished the shoreline with 96 million cubic feet of sand from the ocean floor -- enough to fill the Rose Bowl almost 12 times. In some places, the size of the beach doubled.

That would seem great news, but Cancun now has a dirty little secret: The new sand isn’t as powdery as the stuff it replaced. The eight-mile stretch is grainy and full of the sort of shell fragments and broken coral found at the bottom of the ocean.

“It’s sharp, not what I expected,” says Rocky Shepherd, here for the first time from Mauston, Wis., with his wife, Kathy. “I thought I was going to cut my foot.”

Then there’s the issue of all the big-ticket changes. The 371 rooms in the glassy Fiesta Americana’s Grand Aqua remain shuttered, as do the 560-room Sun Palace and the 300-room Caribbean Village.

But those that have reopened -- most of the area’s 100 hotels -- have used the post-hurricane repair period to upgrade their facilities in luxurious ways.

High-end guests will no doubt love the Ritz-Carlton’s new culinary school (opening Dec. 1) or appreciate the new family-friendly programs at Club Med, including cultural tours of the region.

But this makeover is clearly a push for an even more sophisticated Cancun, one that appeals to convention-goers and spend-happy jet setters, possibly at the expense of midrange travelers, particularly the college revelers.

Who cares, you ask? After all, Cancun is hardly a cultural treasure -- more like Mexico’s version of Miami Beach. Cancun is probably younger than you are, born in 1970 after developers determined that this bubbly barrier island was perfectly suited for big hotels, shoulder to shoulder.

Cancun grew from a sandbar. Today, it is a sometimes-maddening 17-mile concrete jungle of fortress-like resorts, with the occasional wet T-shirt contest to spice up the long, languid evenings. Mothers everywhere would likely rejoice if this tequila-soaked temptation just washed away.

Here’s why Cancun matters. Nearly 40% of the money spent by foreign tourists in Mexico pours into Cancun and the Riviera Maya, the 80-mile stretch of beach and resorts immediately to the south. Cancun and its neighbors represent 15% of Mexico’s total revenue.

Cancun is also the gateway to ruins and historical sites to the west -- Chichen Itza, Valladolid, Coba -- which remind the world of the remarkable Mayan society of great architecture, astronomy and art.

So Cancun counts, even if mostly what it counts is money. If it prices itself out of reach of the midrange traveler, there is still the Maya Riviera and breezy, easy Cozumel.

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Gearing up for playtime

FORTY-TWO miles to the south in Playa del Carmen, $60 by cab ($5 by ADO bus), some happy Texans are sipping Coronas by the beach and trying to out-Texas one another.

Near Senor Frog’s, parasailors bounce along on the early afternoon breezes, and jet skiers crash through the jade-colored waves.

A year ago, waves crashed against this burgeoning town’s front door, dousing the shops that line the beach and closing down resorts, some for months. Yet the storm delivered only a glancing blow to most parts of Playa del Carmen, feasting first on Cozumel before coming ashore here with less damaging seas.

Playa, as the locals call it, is a big part of the future of this region, and the recovery has been quick. You can buy the ubiquitous trinkets at the little craft booths or $100 bikinis at stylish shopping areas that could be right out of Newport Beach. You can have seafood, pizza or pasta ($10) at Rolandi’s and look out on a wall of jungle greenery, nose to nose with a foot-long iguana.

This rapidly growing city of 50,000 is a better mix of old and new Mexico than Cancun, friendlier to pedestrians, more laid back, a great place to knock around (make a pit stop at Trueke: two Coronas for $3, and tacos straight off the street-side grill).

On a Wednesday in late October, a year to the day since Wilma bore down, divers from Ohio and Texas dragged their scuba gear to the pier where ferries depart to Cozumel every two hours or so, more frequently in winter. Easy ferry access to Cozumel ($9) is another thing Playa offers that Cancun doesn’t.

Across the channel, beautiful Cozumel is welcoming back the cruise ships, which were left without docking space after the storm.

Two of the three cruise piers are open again, and 16 cruise ships now dock each week, a number that’s expected to reach 40 during the winter season. Divers wait in the shade at the Aqua Safari pier for their dive boat to pull in, and the sweet perfume of Cuban cigars once again laces the air.

Cozumel was probably hit the hardest of anyplace in the Yucatan, its mangrove trees stripped of leaves, the cruise piers pummeled.

At Cozumel Hotel and Resort, front desk manager Raul Becerril rode out the storm in the sprawling dive resort, with dolphins from a nearby attraction safely stored in the property’s big pool.

The resort never closed, despite damage to 122 of its 181 rooms. Today new air-conditioning systems hum, and the hotel is primped and ready as Becerril looks ahead to winter bookings.

“I’m a little concerned,” he says. “This hotel is especially for divers, and we’re hoping they come back.”

Cozumel is to diving what Aspen is to snow, and fears of reef damage swept through the sport.

But most of those fears were unfounded. Local divers say the shallow reefs close to shore suffered the most. The renowned Palancar reef was deep enough, at 70 feet, to avoid major damage. The Santa Rosa Wall, beloved for its caves and overhangs, came through the storm OK, and perhaps even benefited.

“Some of the sand moved back and opened up some of the tunnels,” says Jose Fernandez, an instructor with Scuba Club Cozumel.

Reefs that didn’t fare so well: Cardona, Yucab and El Isole, according to divers and diving instructors surveyed.

“Just offshore, there is a valley of dead coral, maybe 100 yards out,” says Charles Udischas, here from Coshocton, Ohio. “But it’s still excellent diving.”

That was the sentiment of many divers, who said finger coral and sponges showed the most significant damage. But the coral has regenerated, showing half an inch of new growth.

Farther south, concrete piers pushed into rooms at the elegant Presidente InterContinental Cozumel Resort & Spa, and much of its vegetation was stripped. The 38-year-old resort just reopened Nov. 1, after using the last year to upgrade the entire facility, which today looks brand-new. The sprawling resort has decreased its number of rooms so it could offer more suites, and added a scuba training center, new furniture and wireless Internet access.

“Rather than put it together the way it was, we looked at repositioning it and turning the resort into something really different,” says Javier Rosenberg, general manager of the property, which draws 18% of its business from California.

This is the new Yucatan, stylish, ever more pricey, but with more rate diversity than its big brother across the water. Here, you can rent a jeep or a scooter and high-tail it down the deserted highway toward the beach clubs that line the southwest side of the island.

On your way, be sure to stop at the better-than-usual jewelry and craft shops at Mr. Sanchez’s Beach Club. Or order the shrimp fajitas at the nearby deck, adorned with pastel chairs, a little slice of Caribbean paradise just 300 miles southwest of Havana.

And, as the sun belly flops into the sea, you can raise a margarita to the Mayan descendants who helped put this region back together. The recovery isn’t perfect, but it’s fast, furious and an indicator of just what a financial jewel the Yucatan Peninsula is.

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chris.erskine@latimes.com

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(BEGIN TEXT OF INFOBOX)

When in the Yucatan ...

Do: Look for lodging bargains until about Christmas, when the high season gets into full swing.

Don’t: Expect many deals after that. Despite the hurricane, innkeepers have vowed not to offer the post-storm discounts they have in the past, which they say stunted their profits.

Do: Check out the abundant seafood at places like La Dolce Vita or the Friday night buffet at the Ritz-Carlton; snapper is becoming harder to find, but grouper, shrimp and lobster are plentiful.

Don’t: Drink the water. Many of the big resorts have their own purification systems. When in doubt, go with the bottled stuff.

Do: Take the buses (65 cents), which run every few minutes along the strip and give easy access to downtown Cancun. Pay in pesos; drivers make change.

Don’t: Rent a car. Traffic is hectic and valet parking can be costly.

Do: Always ask the fare before getting into a taxi. A trip into town costs about $12; to the airport, about $20. Shuttle vans are a popular option between the airport and the hotel (about $9).

Don’t: Get to the busy Cancun airport late. Because of ticket counter congestion, you should leave your hotel 2 1/2 to three hours before flights.

Do: Practice your negotiating skills at Market 28 and other small markets scattered in the commercial area of Cancun, just off the R1 and R2 bus route.

Don’t: Be seduced by duty-free shopping without knowing the item’s value. Not everything that is “duty-free” (not taxed) is a bargain.

Do: Take a scooter (about $25 per day, helmet provided) along Cozumel’s southern bend, which changes from sleepy lagoons to crashing surf.

Don’t: Rent anything -- bike, boat or car -- without doing a damage check first. Ask for insurance and gas costs up front.

Do: Take a book or other reading material. Newsstands and bookstores are hard to find.

Don’t: Forget a passport. After Jan. 8, they will be required for air travel between Mexico and the U.S.

-- Chris Erskine

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Back to the beach

GETTING THERE:

From LAX, Mexicana and Alaska offer nonstop flights to Cancun. Mexicana, Continental, America West, American, AeroMexico and Delta offer connecting flights (change of planes). Restricted, round-trip fares begin at $264.

TELEPHONES:

To call the numbers below from the U.S., dial 011 (the international dialing code), 52 (the country code for Mexico) and the number.

WHERE TO STAY:

Flamingo Cancun Resort: Kukulcan Boulevard, Kilometro 11, Cancun, Quintana Roo, Mexico 77500; 998-848-8870, www.flamingocancun.com. Good value in lively, convenient section of hotel zone, offering ocean views. Doubles from $89.

Presidente InterContinental, Carretera a Chankanaab, Cozumel, Quintana Roo, Mexico 77600; 987-872-9500, www.intercontinentalcozumel.com. Very stylish resort on beautiful leeward beach; divers’ paradise. Doubles from $239.

WHERE TO EAT:

Lorenzillo’s, Kukulcan Boulevard, Kilometro 10, Cancun, Quintana Roo, Mexico 77500; 998-883-1254, www.lorenzillos.com.mx. Seafood and other delights in romantic setting over lagoon. Entrees from about $12.

Puerto Madero, Kukulcan Boulevard, Kilometro 14, Cancun, Quintana Roo, Mexico 77500; 998-885-2829, www.puertomaderocancun.com. Great steaks and seafood in a casual, lively atmosphere. Entrees from about $15.

-- Chris Erskine