Hurricane Journal: Riding out the storm

Inquirer staff photographer Clem Murray, on vacation at a Mexican resort, suddenly found himself and a companion in the path of Hurricane Patricia. Without time to evacuate, they hoped for the best.

We left our room a little after 2 p.m. Friday and were escorted about 100 yards to the back of our resort, the Grand Mayan in Nuevo Vallarta, to an immense concrete building that looked like a parking garage, rising five levels. The building indeed housed cars but was also home to numerous departments of the Vidanta Resorts, including the executive offices, accounting, telemarketing and one level for the maintenance department.

My companion, Sue Sampson, and I decided to head to the highest floor used for the shelter, the fourth, figuring that would certainly be high enough above any storm surge that might occur with the historic hurricane. We walked around the floor a couple of times and found a place to wedge ourselves into and then went in search of pool lounge chairs, which were being distributed as beds. After an hour of waiting, we secured two chairs, sheets and pillows.

Time to hunker down in the face of Patricia.

I walked around the shelter, taking photos of all the people crammed into every corner, hallway and room in the building. I found the executive suite of office space - it was air-conditioned. Those evacuees found a really nice spot - Sue and I were on the maintenance floor with fans blowing! I stumbled upon the cafeteria used for the employees, in full operation feeding close to 1,000 people.

After capturing some images, I sat down with my computer to edit my take and file pictures back to the paper. But no luck. Try as I might, I couldn't get a connection to the Internet with computer or cellphone. So I closed down and went back to my shelter bed to hunker down for the night.

Then all of a sudden a voice came over a loudspeaker on my floor, speaking both Spanish and English, saying that "Someone above - pointing heavenward - protected the Nuevo and Puerto Vallarta resort area" as the fury of Hurricane Patricia missed us. Applause and cheers erupted.

After seven hours, we could go back to our rooms, to real beds and air-conditioning. And as a nice touch by the resort, they greeted the weary tourists with margueritas, rum punch, beers and little chocolates.