Well, I know it is almost August but here I am talking about July anyway. It has been a good and interesting month. Cancun is back up to about 85% occupancy with the highest occupancy being downtown. Half of the flights in are domestic flights and the Cancun airport reports June international arrivals down 31.31% so that is good news and bad news.

Domestic tourism is different than international tourism. First of all about 50% of the domestic visitors to Cancun do NOT stay in hotels. They stay with family and friends. They do help local restaurant business though and then there are Cancun people who do “staycations” also and just hang around town and the beaches here which are absolutely crammed with people these days. This is the time of year referred to as “Paisa-break” when instead of Spring or Summer breakers, Cancun fills up with paisanos.

For those who may remember 10 or so years ago when Americans hadn’t yet heard of all inclusive or Playa del Carmen and the Riviera Maya was still called the “corredor turístico”, the newest group heading to the Riviera Maya is now the domestic tourist–especially now with the big 1,000+-room hotels running big specials to fill up the empty rooms left by the international tourists who aren’t arriving. One week at a luxury Riviera Maya hotel per person airfare included from Monterrey, NL Mexico is $13,000 pesos or about $1000 usd.

Rain has been scarce, the kids out of school and the sun hot so beaches have been full. Malls, discos and streets are all getting back into the habit of having people walking around in them. Special discounts for hotels and airlines are continuing even more for the slower months of September and October so take advantage and head on down.

I am harvesting fresh white corn, all kinds of chili peppers, cilantro, zuchinni, radishes, green beans and nopal out at the ranch. I have also started working on the little artificial pond I have to get it ready for my experiment with growing tilapia. Work is plentiful and satisfying. I feel great after losing over 35 pounds. I live in Cancun and life is good.

Well, after almost 4 years (Wilma was in October of 2005!), all of the disparate entities involved (federal, state, local, business, tourists, hotels, marinas, locals, the Light Company et al) have finally decided that it is time to rebuild the 12 kilometers of  beach in Cancun, the 4.2 km. in Playa del Carmen and the 1.5 km. on Cozumel.

Last time–in Spring of 2006–most of the 3 million cubic meters of sand used to rebuild the Cancun beach came from “La Ollita,” a sand bank out in the ocean out by Isla Mujeres. This time, the Federal government through its Environmental Agency SEMARNAT, has approved the whole project using around 7 million cubic meters of sand mostly from a Cozumel sand bank.

Getting any group of people to approve anything is not easy and there have been and are people and groups that are not in favor of the project or not the way it is being done. It is, of course, always easier and less risky to do nothing. The “Mayor” of Cozumel even refused to go to the press conference yesterday where they announced the approval of the project because he and 1,400 other people from Cozumel are against the government using “their” sand to rebuild the beaches in Cancun.

But the program officially starts tomorrow, July 15, 2009 with the company Mexicana de Dragados (the Mexican affiliate of Jan de Nul that rebuilt the beaches back in 2006 and has been involved in the famous Dubai Palm project)starting to hire people and send for their equipment. Around the first part of August they will actually have the dredgers on the way and will start assembling the tubing that will run along the beach to distribute the sand that they bring in. Here are some pictures http://good-times.webshots.com/album/549194379GmTeTS of the process as it was done last time. I don’t expect it to be much different this time.

By the end of August they will actually start dredging and dumping sand onto the beaches–starting with Cancun and then going to Cozumel and Playa later on. The plan (with some extra built in “cushion” days) is to be finished by December 13, 2009. From their lips to God’s ears!