Well, things are springing back here, though some aspects are faster than others. The business part of town is just about back to normal, but many of the hotels have a long way to go. The residential parts of town show varying degrees of damage. I met a guy at Caribe Blu who is coming back in a couple of weeks with a large volunteer group from his church to do roofing work for two or three weeks. That is really impressive!
The dives...
Day 1 > Palancar Caves and Cedral
Day 2 > Colombia and Tuniche
Day 3 > San Francisco Wall and Las Palmas
Day 4 > Colombia and La Francesca
Day 5 > Chun Cha Cab and the top of Palancar
Overall, I'd say that the deep dives with swimthroughs and towering coral heads are just as good as they ever were. The lush shallow dives, however, are showing a lot of damage, with breakage and sand on the reef. At La Francesca, there were large piles of broken finger coral everywhere. I did not see an intact sea fan until the last day at Chun Cha Cab, and there are comparatively few soft corals and barrel sponges just about everywhere. The most badly affected sites I saw were San Francisco, Tuniche, and Las Palmas, and the least affected was Chun Cha Cab. Of course, I did not go everywhere and see all of any one site, so YMMV.
Still, I managed to have an excellent week of diving, and I am looking forward to coming back for our annual diving and fishing trip in May. The high point was the wild dolphin encounter, which was awesome in the truest sense of the word.
I had some great meals here (La Veranda was the best this trip), and the trip around the island was great. The road is now finished, and the vegetation over there is nowhere nearly as affected as that on the west side. Most of the places over there are back up, with the exception of Punta Morena and the Rasta Bar, which are pretty much obliterated. The cinder block building at El Mirador is also gone without a trace. All that is more a result of Emily than Wilma, I believe.
Anyway, that's it from this intrepid reporter for now. I'll add more to this thread when I get home if anything else comes to me.
