by Kate Riley

After riding a bus all night to return to Akumal, there was no way I was getting in a van with all of my compañeros and their pets to go to Palenque. Besides, my friends from the pueblo said, "no pasa nada (nothing will happen)." So Mauricio Bautista Vega and I decided to go and hole up in the pueblo to wait it out.

The day before the hurricane was one of the best I have had in Akumal, with no people, and no boats in the bay, just an eerie calm that made me look all around and back again at my puny self and wonder—What just might happen?

At sunset it started. The sky started changing wildly, rain came down, and the sea, too, looked as if it was going to rain towards the sky. Suddenly, a double rainbow appeared, bright and full, smiling upside-down, saying… It won’t be so bad.

The police came to kick all of the drunks and kids off the beach and we scrambled up the hill to our homes. The rain was thick now and the wind was coming. We were staying with Ernesto, went into the boarded-up room, and sat down with ham-and-cheese sandwiches and flashlights. The electricity had gone long ago and it was bloody hot, but we slept a bit until midnight or so when the wind started coming hard, steadily gaining in intensity. At the peak, 2:30, we began to hear lamina from our neighbors' roofs ripping off, and tree branches breaking. Wind. There was little rain. Then there was nothing—the calm of the eye. The pressure changed and we were all silent and waiting, about 20 minutes.

Then it all came in reverse. Intense, then back to calm, quickly and with little damage. Something had shifted right before, or it changed direction. By any means we were all thankful. We waited for the sun to rise, and it was a strange sun, and suddenly everything had been changed, shifted around. We greeted our neighbors and looked at their homes. "¿Todo bien?" "Si, todo está bien". ("All okay?" "Yes, all okay.") No one was hurt.