When Hurricane Wilma swept thru Cancun a couple Octobers ago the powerful winds stripped away eight miles of some of the prettiest sandy beach internationally. Everybody from Mexican President Vincente Fox down to the local residents knew the beach needed to be revived or Cancun’s future was in grave danger. Inside weeks the Mexican state promised $21 million to revive the beach.
Now they have made good on that guarantee, and a huge barge being run by a Belgian firm is working nighttime and daytime to replace the sand.
The target date to have the bright white sand back in place is the end of Apr, and already the enormous earth moving machines are smoothing the sand dredged up from the sea bed. A long-time problem Cancun has some of the Caribbean’s most pretty beaches. But the resort city of approximately three hundred thousand is perched on the acute southeast end of the Yucatan Spur, looking out into the Caribbean, and too frequently is firmly in the trail of hurricanes that come sweeping in from the ocean.
The difficulty of beach erosion existed long before Hurricane Wilma. Local Cancun officers have known for years the coast was eroding and the beach was being washed out to sea. That process was given a lift by Hurricane Gilbert which swept away about half of the beach in Sep of 1988.
One of the positive outcomes of Hurricane Wilma is that it became the govt to make the dedication to beach restoration.
What shore gurus had been making efforts to do for at least seventeen years, Hurricane Wilma did in a matter of a few days. **An necessary resource for Cancun Erosion of shores and beaches is an issue around the globe, but in Cancun, where it’s the terribly lifeblood of the resort, the disaster of Wilma eventually led straight to significant action.
Cancun is composed of 3 distinct areas. Ciudad de Cancun, the city, has a population of approximately three hundred thousand. Off the beach, the ecological reserve, has phenomenal lakes, forests and mangrove marshland. Cancun is a destination for holiday makers from the U.S, Canada, and Europe.
It has more than 25,000 hotel rooms, loads of trattorias and 1 or 2 hundred shops. There are roads leading to the forest, making it a straightforward trip to see the forest and remains of traditional local Mayan culture. Approximately 3,000,000 holiday makers came to Cancun last year, spending around $4 billion
But Wilma has put a damper on tourism this year. The thousands of travellers, who are beginning to revisit this famous resort, will be back in mobs once the reconstructing and restoration are complete.
