Stranded in Los Cabos: A Travel Agent’s Story

All photos courtesy Nan Peacock

The Peacocks’ vacation was off to a good start. The weather in Los Cabos was spectacular on Friday when they arrived, as well as Saturday. “We had dinner out on the beach Saturday night,” said Nan Peacock of Gulliver’s Travel in Dallas. “The stars were out, and we thought, OK, the hurricane will just skirt us.”

But on Sunday morning, there was a note from the management of AMResorts’ Secrets Puerto Los Cabos under the Peacocks door alerting them that Hurricane Odile was going to make landfall that night – and all reports indicated it was going to be a whole lot worse than originally predicted.

“They suggested we try to get out before four o’clock,” said Peacock. “If we were not out by four we were to go to the shelter, which was in the hotel’s ballroom.” Peacock and her husband were unable to rebook flights out. “We kept thinking, we’ll just ride it out; it won’t be that bad.”

At 4 o’clock on the button, staff advised guests to pack their suitcases and put them in the bathtub, close the bathroom doors, pull in the patio furniture and close the curtains.

The couple then made their way to the property’s ballroom, capable of holding 460 people and almost full, because it was also accommodating guests from other AMResorts’ properties.

The resort had set up Ping-Pong tables, a television, an X Box station and gambling stations to keep guests occupied.

“We had lounge chairs from the pool that were set up so we could stay in there all night long,” said Peacock, adding that hotel management diligently kept guests abreast of the storm’s path.  

Then at 10:30, the shelter’s ceiling began to collapse and guests were taken to the hotel’s basement. “The staff stayed with us all night long,” Peacock said. “They were there and answered any questions. They kept reassuring us that we were safe and that we we’d be fine. We also had five paramedics that AMResorts had gotten to come stay with us for the night, which was really nice.”

The group made it through the night unscathed, and, much to Peacock’s surprise, the resort had somehow managed to prepare a hot breakfast, with bacon and eggs, for the guests.

That day, guests were able to go back to their rooms, and those travelers whose rooms were damaged were assigned new rooms.

“We had very limited cell service,” said Peacock. “You could text but you couldn’t get a phone call through. That’s when we really started to get worried because we couldn’t call anybody at home – and we knew our family and friends were worried about us.”

Management alerted guests that, thanks to generators, they would have electricity and water for two to four hours a day. Also, they would be served three meals a day.

“They told you what time you had to be down there and they told you what time the power and the water would be on so you could take a shower,” Peacock said.

There was no air conditioning, as the hotel was trying to save generator fuel. “It was tough,” said Peacock, “but there was always a nice breeze off the ocean, so that helped. It was not comfortable but it was doable.”

Staff had also set up tables that served as information desks throughout the resort. “That was the best thing,” said Peacock. “We were never worried because we knew what was going on. We knew the power lines were down so we knew we couldn’t get to the airport and they just kept telling us, ‘We’ll go day by day by day.’”

The atmosphere at the hotel, Peacock said, was collegial. “Everybody just banded together,” she said.  On Tuesday morning, guests began working hand-in-hand with staff, sweeping away debris into trash bags until the general manager stopped them, saying it as too hot and that guests were unused to the un-air-conditioned environment. “He said he couldn’t afford to have us dehydrated,” Peacock said. “So everybody just sat around and laughed after that.”

Although the resort had taken on an almost festive air, lingering concerns persisted. “The looting was the most exasperating thing,” said Peacock. “That was really the most dangerous thing that I saw. I was wondering if once they looted the stores would they come after the tourists.”

On Tuesday morning staff told guests that they were going to drive out to the airport to assess the situation there. “So someone from the resort drove to the airport and came back at 1 o’clock and said, ‘The government is going to start flying people out this afternoon,”” Peacock said. The hotel arranged transfers of 45 people at a time every three hours. No one would be flown out after 6 p.m.

“They were going to take pregnant women, children and people who had medical conditions first,” said Peacock. A staff member asked the Peacocks if they wanted to go and told them they had 15 minutes to collect their belongings.

At the airport, there were seemingly endless lines for flights to Mazatlan, Mexico City, Guadalajara and Tijuana. “We got there around three and we stood in line for two and a half hours,” she said, adding that she and her husband worried that they were not going to be able to get out on a flight that day before six pm.

Then, an announcement was made for guests to form a new line for Monterey. “We just went to the Monterey line because that was just easier for us to get to Texas out of Monterey anyway,” Peacock said. “They didn’t ask for passports or names, which totally freaked me out. If one of those planes went down no one would ever never know who’s on it.”

They boarded a Mexican commuter plane that first flew to Guadalajara and then on to Monterey. “As soon as we got to Guadalajara we called home and told everybody where we were,” Peacock said. “Everybody on that plane was calling home and people were borrowing each other’s phones – just whatever it took.”

In Monterey, American Airlines booked the Peacocks on a flight to Dallas, much to the relief of their family and friends. “They were just frantic,” said Peacock. “They were seeing all this awful stuff on the TV.”

As frightening as the experience was, Peacock said she and her husband are looking forward to getting back to Cabo, noting that some hotels such as Secrets suffered mostly cosmetic damage with broken glass and water damage. “I know AMResorts said they’re opening all four of their resorts on Nov.15,” she said.

In the final analysis, Peacock credits AMResorts for making the experience in Cabo as palatable as it possibly could have been. “I just cannot say enough about AMResorts and how we were treated the whole time we were there,” she said. “I’m dying to go back.”