Cancun bounces back to business

CANCUN, Mexico — Carl Johnson said his heart missed a beat when he saw the beach outside his Cancun timeshare.

He was expecting little sand a year after the resort was savaged by the most intense Atlantic hurricane on record. But what he saw took him by complete surprise.

His patch of golden-white sand had tripled in size, stretching a gaping 140 feet toward the crystal-clear Caribbean water.

"After the initial shock, I just burst out laughing. It is so weird when you are used to seeing something and then it completely changes," said Johnson, a 50-year old aircraft mechanic from Chicago.

Cancun's new beach, built by pumping 96 million cubic feet of sand from the ocean floor, is the highlight of an extreme makeover the resort has gone through since it was punished by Hurricane Wilma on Oct. 21, 2005.

Mexican tourist officials are promoting their Caribbean haven as being fully revamped and made bigger, better and more glitzy than it was before Wilma. Public and private investment for the rebuilding has totaled $1.5 billion they say.

In many aspects, the reconstruction has been a Herculean success, letting most tourists enjoy their holidays oblivious to the destruction that wracked the resort a year ago. Bikini-clad sun bathers line the beaches; honeymooning couples sip margaritas in hotel pools and crowds of red-faced revelers croak karaoke songs down at Senor Frog's disco.

But the devastating power of Wilma wrought some damage that could not possibly be fixed within 12 months, and signs of the wreckage can still be found in corners of the Caribbean retreat.

Wilma came with little warning, swelling from a tropical storm to a Category 5 hurricane in under 24 hours, then pounding Cancun for two days and nights, felling roofs, hurling palm trees and submerging streets in stinking floodwater.

When the storm finally retreated, an 8-mile stretch of beach was almost completely washed away, exposing a line of ragged rocks.

However, worldwide beach erosion has led to rapid advances in the techniques for its reclamation, and Belgian company Jan de Nul made Cancun a showcase for its newest technology.

Two ships sucked up sand 20 miles off the Mexican coast, carried it to the shore and used colossal pipes to lay down half a mile of beach a week.