Climbing Through the Wreckage—Aftermath to a Hurricane: Part 2

Chapter 9

Before the storm—Alejandro’s neighbor’s house. Photo Paul Zappella.

Mexico Soul presents a condensed version of Where the Sky is Born, my travel memoir on buying land, building a house and opening a bookstore. Earlier chapters in Archives.

We were in Mexico again after an unsatisfying meeting with Alejandro in San Francisco, realizing we were a long way off from seeing ground being broken on our new land any time soon—the land that had been swapped in exchange for our original land grabbed through eminent domain by the state of Quintana Roo.

First stop—Puerto Morelos, a place where we felt grounded. After staying the night at Hotel Paradise and talking to the hotel clerk, she’d told us her husband was a realtor and knew of beachfront lots for sale in town. On meeting with Rodolfo at his beachfront home, we learned the lot next to him was for sale as well as another lot further out of town.

To see it, he’d pointed us north, towards the beach road. We drove slowly down the half-paved, half-dirt street, taking in the town. In three blocks the pavement ended and so did the houses. The road became sascab, a light colored sandy substance found everywhere in the Yucatán. Paul maneuvered the VW Beetle in one rut, out the other. Small clouds of dust trailed behind us.

I marveled at the solitude of the jungle—it was uncharacteristically still. Although countless birds should have been singing, the hurricane had temporarily banned their songs. Birds couldn’t live without trees for food and refuge. A friend told us he’d almost caught a baby White-Fronted parrot on this road, but the bright green bird avoided capture and flew back into the barren jungle. It would soon die he said as the forest couldn’t sustain life until foliage grew back.

Even without foliage we knew this road. It was the road that led to Alejandro’s.

“We’ll be driving right by Alejandro’s,” Paul said as he adjusted the rear view mirror on our bug. “We can see what’s left of it.”

I brushed the hair off my neck, now damp from humidity. “Karla said nothing was left.”

The washboard road stopped our conversation. We soon came to a familiar bend and saw Cabañas la Ceiba. What a shock. The reception area and restaurant still stood but were in shambles, cracked through the middle. The once existing cabañas faired even worse—uprooted and standing straight on end. Gone too were the elegant coco palms. Any tree left standing had been reduced to a mere stump and remaining brush was charred, as if an unforgiving forest fire had ravaged the area.

After passing the hotel we were even more curious about what might remain of Alejandro’s house. Soon we recognized his wide stretch of beach and saw the veterinarian’s house next door, still standing. Since we’d been told everything had been destroyed it was a relief to see something. Then we saw Jacinto’s bodega, the Maya style pyramid dwelling Alejandro had built for his caretaker.

How odd that it was still standing. It looked rock solid, while in the place where Alejandro’s house had stood, absolutely nothing. Not a tree, no sign of a sea wall. Nothing to show it had ever existed.

I stared at the stubby zapote pilings in the water, once part of the dock, heard the swoosh of a pelican as it dove into the sea surprising an unsuspecting fish, gazed out at the reef, watching waves curl, collide, recede. Face it, I told myself. There is nothing left of Alejandro’s magical Mediterranean style house. Nada.

Next to Alejandro’s we saw his neighbor’s, a large, modern-looking structure, two stories high and apparently untouched. I blinked. Was this for real?

I pointed in surprise, “Paul—Barry’s house! It looks like it survived!”

“How did he manage that?” Paul seemed as surprised as I was.

The neighbor next door

Barry was another local character, an American expat and Los Angeles refugee. We’d met him at the bar at La Ceiba whenever we stayed there. In fact any time we were there, so was Barry. His home away from home. Barry always stood alone at the end of the hardwood bar like a wrangler in off the plains. We got to know him on our recurring trips to Puerto Morelos. Eventually he’d invited us to see the house that now stood before us.

He’d left LA a few years before, driving a classic Thunderbird and toting a long board to the wild coast of Quintana Roo with his worldly second wife. They hardly seemed a match. She was decades younger and very Junior League. Exactly how she became a player in this Mexico scenario was beyond me. Either quiet or aloof, she had a sense of ennui about her Mexican experience.

Barry was the extreme opposite, not lacking in the personality department. Back then it was surprising to meet someone in their late fifties—before luxury became synonymous with the Riviera Maya—brazen enough to give up the amenities of U.S. life and traipse to an unknown spot in southern Mexico to build a house. Tall and lanky, his hair was just beginning to thin, but no doubt he’d been a contender in his day. Although not outright handsome he had a certain sexiness. Anything lacking in looks he made up for with his audacious nature. Now thinking back on it he was probably always half in the bag. His previous profession as a plastics salesman had no doubt been well served by his king-of-the-hill mentality. When Barry spoke, everyone listened.

Barry’s house construction took three years and his go-to line was, “The experience of a lifetime.”

“There’s no law here. They make it up as they go along. They’re out to get us gringos. It was torture, pure torture to build my house. But I showed ‘em. I finished in spite of it all. And it’s a helluva house. Drop in for a look.”

“We’d love to see it,” I said. “Next time we’re walking by, we’ll drop in.”

That had been our intro to Barry and his LA style house. Paul pulled into the Maya rock driveway, now littered with palm fronds, cement, conch shells, window frames, general storm debris.

“It’s obvious no one is here,” Paul said, getting out of the car. “Let’s take a look.”

It was eerie being there and finding Barry’s house standing after passing Alejandro’s and seeing nothing but Jacinto’s bodega.

“Let’s walk to the beach and check the tide,” Paul said.

We picked our way through the rubble, climbing carefully.

“Oh my God!” I gasped as we came alongside the house. Paul stopped.

“What?” he yelled, turning back. “Oh no!”

Looking at the side view of Barry’s house we could see why no one was there.

It had been ripped in half from the oceanside and looked like a child’s dollhouse with no walls, bare rooms exposed, open to the elements.

Winds, rain, water surge

Before us lay a mass of rebar, granite, marble, tile, windows, refrigerator door, chunks of cements, bed frames. The gaping hole from this skeleton of a house yawned at us. The foundation was taken by the surge, not the wind. Buildings can’t handle more than a few hours of continuous rushing water.

We stared at the wreckage, beginning to see the devastation Gilberto had caused, now in a very personal way. Alejandro’s house had disappeared, but maybe this half a house was worse.

We heard later that in spite of the ruined house, Barry had been lucky. Three months before Gilberto he sold it for a cool $250,000 U.S. in a cash deal to an older couple. While his luck held, theirs failed miserably. Rumor had it someone told them that house insurance in Mexico was costly and might not pay if a disaster struck so they passed on it. They were devastated by their bad fortune and had no stomach for rebuilding. It was one of many stories we heard about the hurricane now that we were getting to know the locals.

“Let’s walk to Alejandro’s,” I said to Paul, grabbing his hand as if that would provide some form of reassurance.

We picked our way through the debris intermingled with sea grass, taking sideways looks at the house where we’d had drinks with Barry and his youthful wife. In the shallow Caribbean water, perched at a precarious angle, sat a mosque-like Arabian dome, formerly the stylized home’s focal point. Still covered in small, cobalt-colored mosaics, it caught an occasional glimmer from the sun, as if to prove its previous existence.

I thought back to the evening we’d stopped in for the house tour. Surprisingly Barry was there and not at La Ceiba. He’d been in full-Barry form, showing off expensive handmade Mexican tiles and marble countertops, pointing out the finely crafted hardwood furniture, the solid mahogany doors. We’d listened to the continuation of his contractor stories, how the man spoke no English, Barry no Spanish, and the pandemonium that erupted daily due to their exchanges.

He told us about the bouncing price, depending on the peso and the fluctuating material costs from week to week. How the timeline came and went, and daily at six Barry awoke to the sound of tap, tap, tap. The Maya workers lived on site, were early risers and began shaping the rocks they’d use that day at daybreak.

Now Barry’s house was ruined and we were climbing through more debris onto another familiar beach. Alejandro’s beach. Where no trace—not a trace!—of Alejandro’s house stood.

Climbing through the wreckage

Stranger still, as we climbed through the wreckage, the day began to take on the feeling of an old Corona ad. You know the one—where a buff, tanned gringo throws away his beeper after he finds paradise and a cold Corona on a white sand beach.

It felt just like that. Here we stood in Carthage yet the sky was unbelievably blue and meringue shaped cumulus hung in the background. The day’s total perfection seemed a sharp contrast to Gilberto’s path of destruction.

“Jacinto’s house is in good shape,” Paul said, pointing towards Alejandro’s. “Look—it hasn't been touched.”

“So strange. I wonder if Alejandro’s house blocked the wind or the pyramid shape protected it.”

Who could say? It wouldn’t be till years later that we heard a strange tale of Alejandro and his Maya caretaker, Jacinto. Just weeks before the storm, Alejandro said they’d had a vicious fight and Jacinto had ended the argument by shouting curses at him. Maya curses. Then Jacinto began a series of  rituals—burning candles and lighting copal, Maya incense with a pungent odor. Alejandro said he’d been physically shaken by the encounter. Who wouldn’t be unnerved at being the target of someone yelling curses? We could never put aside the coincidence though that after the hurricane Alejandro’s house disappeared leaving no trace, and Jacinto’s bodega in the shape of a pyramid still stood firm, only feet from where the main house had been.

Paradise has its perils

We were here, in the land of the Maya. Was it sheer coincidence or had Jacinto enlisted the talents of a shaman to get even with Alejandro? Herbs, candles and rituals were as common to a Maya as filling a prescription was for me. Friends who knew about these matters insisted it was the state of the one being cursed, their receptivity, that was the all important ingredient. If the target felt at risk, trickery could be done.

We had no idea if Alejandro was superstitious, but all in all, magic had not only failed him but also the entire Caribbean coast. Now we knew first hand that paradise had its perils. And if we had built a house at the land, would that house have stood, or would we be as luckless as Alejandro?

Maybe in some way dumb luck and years of waiting had saved us from the disheartening experience of building our dream house only to see it taken by storm.

Who could say? In the end, one thing I knew for sure: we were in the mysterious land of the Maya and anything was possible.

Barry’s house after Hurricane Gilberto. Photo Paul Zappella

And if you’re interested in supporting independent journalism and writing, please consider a paid subscription to Mexico Soul. It would mean the world to me and will keep you up to date on all my posts and chapters from Where the Sky is Born, detailing how we bought land and built a house in a small fishing village on the Mexico Caribbean coast. Not to mention a bookstore, too! All for $5/monthly or $50 per year.

Backstory—Puerto Morelos sits within 100 miles of four major pyramid sites: Chichen Itza, Coba, Tulum and Ek Balam. By living in close proximity to this Maya wonderland we pyramid hopped on our days off from Alma Libre Libros, the bookstore we founded in 1997. Owning a bookstore made it easy to order every possible book I could find on the Maya and their culture, the pyramids, the archeologists who dug at these sites and the scholars who wrote about them, not to mention meeting archeologists, tour guides, and local Maya who popped into the store. I became a self-taught Mayaphile and eventually website publishers, Mexican newspapers and magazines, even guidebooks asked me to write for them about the Maya and Mexico. I’ll never stop being enthralled by the culture and history and glad there’s always new news emerging for me to report on right here in Mexico Soul. Please share this post if you know others interested in the Maya. Thank you!