Go-Bag Glam and Hurricane Havoc: My Wild Ride with Erick in Puerto Escondido

Now, I already know what you are going to say. Why in the world are you in the tropics during hurricane season!?! Well, you see, that was not the original plan. All my research into Puerto Escondido, Oaxaca, México, indicated that hurricane season in this area doesn’t really start until July, with me safely back in Seattle. So what the crap is happening this year?!? Hurricane Erick just tore through here as a Category 4… the earliest a major hurricane has ever hit México. EVER! Sigh.

Anticipation

I spent the last three weeks watching the weather reports as tropical storm after tropical storm formed off of the coast. Named Storm Barbara was the first to reach hurricane strength (Cat 1) just after it passed by here, but it was pretty far off and only brought wind and some rain. Still, these storms shouldn’t be forming this early in the season. Especially with nothing happening in the Atlantic ocean. Stupid climate change.

Well, that brings me to Hurricane Erick. It was predicted to be a Category 1. Nothing to worry about. Just a big storm. Then the prediction increased in strength but moved west. Good for us, but really bad for Acapulco. That poor city was devastated in 2023 by Hurricane Otis (Cat 5) and again in 2024 by Hurricane John (Cat 3). Many people died with upwards of US$18 billion in damages. Acapulco is still recovering and they do not need another hurricane for the third year in a row!

I had legitimately planned on being out by hurricane season, and now this is the fifth named Pacific Ocean storm and second hurricane. WTF! Well, I’ve been through a hurricane before (Hurricane Irma as a Cat 5!) so now I’m a pro. Time to prepare. Bring in all the furniture from the balcony so it doesn’t fly off into the ocean or through my balcony doors. Move all my clothes and stuff from my entry room as that room is open to the elements. Close all windows and doors. Get some non-perishable food from the store.

Emergency to-go bag

A friend up the street texted to make sure I was preparing properly. He reminded me to pack an emergency to-go bag. Totally forgot about that gem! This bag should have everything you need to survive a couple of days if you need to evacuate. Passports, medications, water, flashlight, snacks, bandages, maybe a change of clothes. Keep it light and keep it by the door just in case. I also put my sneakers under my bed so if the windows blew out, I wouldn’t have to walk barefoot on broken glass to get to them. Smart!

Hurricane Erick is now a Category 2 and moving fast. It’s still expected to hit west of here, but anything could happen. It’s just a waiting and hoping game at this point. Time to go see how the locals are preparing for this craziness. By the time I made it down to Playa Principal, almost every single boat in the area had been loaded up on trucks and gotten off the beach. Many were parked in open fields and along the roads.

I have never seen the beach so empty. All the loungers and umbrellas were stored away. People were boarding up the restaurants. It was definitely a concerted effort by the community to protect as much as possible. I spotted a reporter setting up by the PE Bay military building (I think I found his article in The Associated Press, which got picked up by a Seattle paper!). People are taking this seriously. It’s so weird though because it’s actually quite nice out with no wind to speak off. The calm before the storm.

This is not looking good

Back at my place, I download a bunch of shows for when the power goes out. I also charged all my devices and a power bank to be on the safe side. It’s about 8pm at this point and the rains have started but no wind. That’s when I get a text from management asking for a favor. She can’t remember if she closed all the windows in the penthouse above me. Luckily, she left the keys in the door and asked if I could go up and check. As I was opening the door, this startled gecko freaks out and tries to hide from me by crawling under the arch of my bare foot. Absolutely adorable!

He realized his mistake and took off into the night. I closed all the windows upstairs and hoped for the best as it’s a fishbowl up there. Gorgeous in pleasant weather, but that would be scary in a storm of this magnitude. Hurricane Erick is up to a Cat 4 and the landfall prediction has shifted back towards us. Crap! The building’s owner notifies me that power in the region will be disconnected at 11pm for safety reasons. Crap!

While I should have done this earlier, I move all my perishable food from the fridge to the freezer. There is so much food in there (breakfast taco meat, burgers, homemade chicken bone broth, paella). If the power goes out for too long, I’m going to be very sad. Cell service goes down. No calling for help now! Screw this… I’m going to bed. Power goes out at 10pm but comes back on… then out again… then on… then finally out for good.

Is that the ocean?

I begin to hear this dramatic booming sound that vibrates through the building. Holy crap, those are waves smashing into the cliff below. I can feel it in my chest with each boom. Then the winds start howling through the area. My windows are rattling with it all. Luckily, the wind is going east-west but my condo is north-south so it’s not slamming into my windows head on.

Later, I check outside to find that there is a waterfall heading down the stairs from inside the penthouse. No broken windows, though. It’s just so much rain that it’s coming in through the bottoms of the windows. The penthouse has sloped tile floors, so the water heads right out with no damage. On the way back to my place, I spot a red land crab hiding from the storm in the hallway. The things you see in the tropics! Back to bed.

Hurricane Erick passed by Puerto Escondido as a Category 4 storm but luckily weakened to a Cat 3 before making landfall to the west. Loads of damage with flash flooding and roofs being torn off, but only two deaths in México. In this complex, one of my neighbors lost a really pretty planter and stuff was strewn about, but not much else. With no power or cell service (having no way to call emergency services is a big deal!), I ate some nuts and chips to avoid opening the fridge and headed on down to the bay.

The damage

There is this fun set of stairs that leads down to the ocean from my neighborhood. Unfortunately, once I got to the bottom, I realized that the side path to the bay was cut off by a downed tree and flooding. I’m not walking through that. Going further down to the ocean, I met an older gentleman picking through what looked like styrofoam on the rocks. I wondered over to get a closer look and realized that the cabana that used to be there was just gone along with the sidewalk and pathway along the cliff-side.

The gentleman said that he had had a coco frío stand with a grill inside the cabana and it was all destroyed by the storm surge. Looking around, you could see the innards of his coco fridge scattered everywhere. The metal casing was wrapped around a tree further up the hillside. That was some powerful storm! That poor guy just lost his livelihood.

He points up the other hillside to show another tragedy. One of the massive cacti had been slashed in half by the wind and shattered, scattering it across the stairs. That succulent must have been 50 years old with how big it was. I think it might survive, though. There’s also a miniature river that has sprouted up between me and the stairs. Well, I guess I can’t go that way to the bay either. Back up the way I came and around.

Bahía Principal

Once I finally made it to the bay, I was both shocked by the damage and amazed at the cleanup. The whole community was working together to gather trash and debris while the military was using trucks to haul it all away. The new breakwater had pretty much been taken out by the storm surge, along with all the fishermen’s storage buildings built on it. That’s where I got my fresh sailfish the last time I had fish tacos. Not anymore! All gone!

People were in shock. Entire massive slabs of concrete had washed onto shore. The iconic sailfish statue had been ripped from its stand and tossed into the water where its butt poked out (zoom in on the upper right of my feature photo to see the fisherman’s storage building and sailfish statue from months ago). Much of the cacti around the area were damaged. And the bridge that was used to get from the bay to where that gentleman had lost his cabana had washed into the sea. That bridge was scary AF with several steps missing and no handrails, but it was also really pretty. Many a random stranger had helped me up and over that thing.

Back at the bay, I noticed that the two brand new lifeguard towers on the beach were gone. One was on its side all the way across the sand by a restaurant, and one was nowhere to be seen. Hopefully, the military can just stand the remaining one back up. Before those towers were built two months ago, the poor lifeguards had to sit in the sand under an umbrella. Not the best vantage point.

I need power!

On the long walk home (up the hill, down another hill, up a different hill) with a detour to see how the freshly palm thatched roof of the Mirador Un Sueño Posible had faired (it was fine, though a nearby neighbor had his metal roof slide right off), I noticed some lights on and was super excited to have power. Arriving home, nope. No power and no cell service. But my food!!!

My fridge was starting to leak. Canned tuna on gluten-free pasta for lunch. Lucky for me, I have a gas stove. After a bunch of trial and error, I finally got the satellite feature on my iPhone to work so that I could send a message to my parents. My mum-in-law was very worried and about to send in the national guard, while my parents were fairly blasé about the situation. I did tell them I might lose power, and they are former forest fire fighters so this isn’t that scary by comparison.

Finally, late in the evening, power slowly came back on to the sounds of cheering and clapping up and down the neighborhood! Finally! Everything in my freezer was still frozen. Time for dinner. Note. Don’t freeze paella. The rice gets mealy. Don’t worry, as I’ll eat it anyway. I can hear church bells ringing, as well as loud fireworks and singing. That sometimes means that someone died, but maybe it’s celebrating power being back on? Still no cell service, though. I can’t even use the hotel next door’s StarLink connection as their antenna got ripped off the roof in the storm.

The next day

In the morning, with no cell service and no way to see how friends are doing, I hike into Rinconada. It’s a long hike, but my friend is home. He has StarLink, but doesn’t have any power. Rinconada has older infrastructure, and he’s on their grid. He was about to take off for a café, and I head out with him. The café is in Zicatela, which got hit with some pretty serious flooding. People are shoveling sand from the streets.

The café has power and satellite internet and mocha frappes. Noms! There is a frenzy of texting and calling people to let them know we are all safe. Plus some bills that have to be paid. I had one due today that I was truly freaking out about. I would have lost a lot of money if I had missed that deadline. And yes.. I did try to pay it before the storm, but their website was down.

After that, with the promise of feeding him lunch, we went back to his house to pick up his StarLink dish to take to my condo where I have power. He put it right onto my neighbor’s slanted roof with no concern that it would fall three stories down. Brave, that man. It worked well, and I even downloaded more shows.

Is that the President?

Later in the evening, after my friend had left and the city finally got cellphone service back, I heard helicopters in the distance. Looking out over Zicatela, I spotted two military helicopters escorting a fancy one moving slowly over the area. Obviously surveying the damage. That has got to be México’s President Claudia Sheinbaum! Quick check on the internet confirmed that she was in the area. I previously saw her giving a speech in Mazatlán during her campaign for the presidency. How random.

All in all, the damage could have been a lot worse. Only two people died in México (a one-year-old drowned in a flash flood and a man was killed by electrocution from a downed wire) and power was restored very quickly. The ocean is crazy brown with large trees and debris floating around, but it’s getting better. Beaches are slowly reforming and the cleanup has been amazing. I’ve even seen a few boats slowly cruising past.

What can I do to avoid this in the future? Head inland before hurricane season! To be fair, this is really rare. This is the earliest a major hurricane has ever hit México on either the Pacific or Atlantic side. The Atlantic Ocean still hasn’t seen a whisper of a named storm this year, and we have had five on this side. It’s an Adventure!