Hurricane Delta crashes New Philadelphia couple’s honeymoon
NEW PHILADELPHIA Nicole and Joe Bornhorst are back in their South Side home after a whirlwind honeymoon in Mexico.
The whirlwind — hurricane Delta — forced them to vacate the Hard Rock Hotel in Cancun a day after they arrived.
“They told us that there was a tropical storm brewing, but don’t be alarmed or anything,” said Joe, a 2011 graduate of New Philadelphia High School. “Later that night, we got a paper saying that said the beach and the pool was closed for the following day.”
After sneaking down to the beach on the morning of Oct. 6, they found a note on their hotel room door. In English, it informed them they would need to check out at 11 a.m. Nicole used a translation program to read the rest of the note, which was in Spanish. Joe went to the front desk for more information about the evacuation.
They were allowed to take carry-on luggage and leave the rest behind. They waited in line for an hour to catch a tour bus that took them to the Hard Rock Hotel in Riviera Maya about 55 miles away.
As they were being moved, the hurricane was approaching fast and gaining strength.
“They say that Hurricane Delta was the fastest-forming hurricane on record,” said Nicole, a 2011 graduate of Strasburg High School. “So when we were told it was a tropical storm, it was probably still a tropical storm. But it went to a Category 4 pretty quick.”
Joe said the staff in Riviera Maya kept the evacuees calm by feeding them and playing music.
They found themselves bunking with at least 450 people in the hotel’s convention center, by Nicole’s estimate. They slept on the kind of chairs used for lounging poolside. There was room to walk between the head and foot of the chairs, but barely enough space beside them to slip a hand through. They were furnished with comforters and sheets.
Nicole found herself between two snoring men for the night: Joe and a stranger.
“I didn’t sleep,” she said.
Delta hit Oct. 7, leaving the Riviera Maya convention center without power. It wrecked the expansive glass windows in the restaurant where the couple had dined Monday night at the Hard Rock in Cancun. It was the only place the couple ate before the storm hit.
The couple left Riviera Maya on Oct. 8. With only one day left on their planned five-day, all-inclusive $1,300 vacation package, they decided to stay an extra day. They caught a flight home Oct. 10, a week after they were married at the Encore Hall in Berlin.
They spent the extra day at the pool and beach. They were the first and last guests to get drinks from the poolside bar. Both got sunburned.
The hotel offered them certificates for three days and two nights to compensate them for the inconveniences caused by the storm. But the limitations will make it practically impossible to use them. They used one bonus day on the tail end of their planned five-day trip.
“The whole thing left a very sour taste in my mouth,” said Joe.
But the evacuation probably went as smoothly as it could have, Nicole said.
“Honestly, for the circumstance, we were treated well,” said Joe. “We at least had a roof over our head, and food and drinks. For what it could have been, it was OK. We were safe. We weren’t on the 10th floor of a glass-front high-rise when the hurricane hit. It still just sucks that we got one day of our honeymoon and the rest was spent in a refugee center, basically.”
While at Riviera Maya, the guests from the Cancun site were not permitted to leave the convention center. Staff shooed inside those who went to explore the beach. Some who ventured out missed the bus that departed early for the return trip to Cancun.
The trip back to the hotel was taken without air conditioning in 100-degree temperatures.
The couple marvels at the unlikelihood of the mishaps that befell them on the Cancun trip.
Joe has few travel troubles while flying up to 70,000 miles a year as a professional racer for Tekno RC radio-controlled cars.
“The first time we go on vacation, it just gets completely ruined,” said Joe.
Before Delta, the last hurricane to hit Cancun arrived in 2005.
“In theory, it shouldn’t have been a problem,” Joe said. “There hasn’t been one for 15 years. If we have gone the week before or the week after, it would have been fine.”
The COVID-19 pandemic canceled a dirt bike race that Nicole was to have watched in March in Michigan during a week off her job managing BoxLunch, a pop-culture themed gift store at Belden Village Mall in Canton.
“I don’t think I’m allowed to go on vacations. I give up,” she said.
Nicole came away from her honeymoon with a lesson: “Don’t go to Cancun during hurricane season.”
Reach Nancy at 330-364-8402 or nancy.molnar@timesreporter.com.
On Twitter: @nmolnarTR
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