By Jorge Cirett

At some point between 1:00 and 2:00 on October 25th the storm eased, the winds and rain were not as strong and you could see at least the shadows of the other buildings.

The corridor noises had subsided and I was able to open the door and take a look outside, where things looked far worse than I expected, with pieces of cardboard all over and metal stripes hanging from the ceiling.

Even if my room didn’t look nice, and Miguel and Lucy’s room was undamaged, we were about to discover that we were extremely lucky. As we went to the aisle, it was full of obstacles, a complete door with its frame, cardboard, metal frames and fittings, dirt….. and several rooms had no inner walls, we could see inside these.

By 2:00 am the wind wasn’t hurricane force any more, and I decided to go to bed. Not much later voices sounded on the corridor, and soon we learn’t hotel employees were gathering all guests to conduct us to a large hall to take shelter. They guided us through the debris filled corridor downstairs, and by 3:00 we were settled in, along the rest of the guests. There was a brief period with Wi-Fi that most used to send notes home, by 5:00 am it was also gone and wouldn’t come back for almost 24 hours.