By Alan Solomon
Tribune staff reporter
Published December 11, 2005

Cozumel

Battered. Big time. But bouncing back.

Said Manuel Ortiz, owner of Studio Blue Dive Center and an instructor: "Everything is normal except for one thing: No tourists."

Well, some. Ron Smith and John Hartwick, both of Duluth, Minn., came down just to help Ortiz, their favorite dive guy, put a roof back on his shop. Things like that happen in Cozumel.

"I've traveled around," said Smith, "and of all the places I've been, there's no place more friendly than this island."

"You become related," said a grateful Ortiz. "The dive shop and the people."

Everything is not normal. The airport is operational and the small hotels in the island's only town, San Miguel, are open. But the larger hotels--all damaged, some severely--will take longer. Until then, the lifeblood will be cruise-ship passengers.

The world's most active cruise port (1,307 arrivals in 2004, according to Marrufo, the Cozumel spokesman), San Miguel lost its dock to Wilma; where 40 to 45 ships would stop here in an average week in late November and December, that number has been cut in half, and passengers could be arriving by tender for at least a year.

There are at least two Cozumels. There's the cruise stop, with its waterfront main street of shops that sell silver and T-shirts and Cuban cigars, with its quickie excursions to beach clubs and snorkeling sites and, now, a Jack Nicklaus-designed golf course. Almost all the stores are open. The course reopened a month after the hurricane passed, and at least one beach club--Paradise Beach--was back in action after workers brought back the sand that Wilma had blown inland.

"The guys spent like 10 days with shovels and wheelbarrows to haul the sand out of the mangroves," said the club's owner, Peter Something (he refused to reveal his last name). "Never one complaint. You know what it's like shoveling sand all day?"

The other Cozumel is the one that's been a mecca for divers for at least half a century--the one with great coral in warm water whose visibility is world renowned.

The reef took a hit too.

"All the shallow reefs are not completely gone, but they are damaged," Ortiz said. "They will rebuild. But if you come and dive here and haven't seen it before, for you it's gorgeous. The deep dives are OK."

Cozumel still has work to do. But for those who don't need cable TV and turndown service, and love Mexico and its people and its simpler pleasures, maybe Marrufo is underestimating what is already here.

Undamaged by Wilma, except for parts of a road that should be fixed by the time you read this, was the side of the island that's open to the sea, the side not facing Playa del Carmen, the side away from the cruise port and the silver shops.

There it's rugged shoreline and long, white-sand beaches interrupted only by a couple of places where the beer is cold and the ceviche fresh and the hammock comes free with the Corona.

"It's called `the other side of the island,' " said Marrufo. "We locals like this area very much."

And the water is glorious shades of blue.