Blow Away Vacation

September 2, 2007 7:44 PM

Is it crazy to go to the Caribbean during hurricane season?

My boyfriend and I are planning a trip for the end of September and rates in the Caribbean are OUTRAGEOUSLY cheap because it's hurricane season. Hotels that are normally $800 a night are now $200. Is it worth taking the chance to go at the end of September or do you think we should take a safer bet and stay up north?? Has anyone gone to the Caribbean this time of year?

posted by adrober to travel & transportation (18 comments total)

I don't think it's crazy if you understand the risks.

If you book through a travel agent many offer insurance against the possibility of a cancellation. Might be an avenue worth considering? Of course this may eat up some of your "discount".
posted by Octoparrot at 7:57 PM on September 2, 2007

It's not particularly risky in terms of danger. OTOH, it's fairly likely your vacation could be stressful or have rainy weather.
posted by smackfu at 8:02 PM on September 2, 2007

My husband and I took our honeymoon to the Caribbean during hurricane season. Sure enough, our resort was hit by a hurricane a few weeks before we were due to arrive. As it turns out, the resort re-opened the day we got there, and we had the whole place practically to ourselves the entire week - I think there were maybe three or four other couples there. It was great! No towel-on-the-beach-lounger games, top notch service in all the restaurants, lots of privacy and no waiting for anything. It was risky but worth it for us. So, as long as you get travel insurance and have realistic expectations about the probability that you might not get to go or might have to bail early, I'd say go for it.
posted by AV at 8:07 PM on September 2, 2007 [1 favorite]

Echoing smackfu -- the risk for tourists of being killed by a hurricane is vanishingly small. However, the risk of having your flights canceled or rerouted is fairly significant, and if you are headed to an island that got pummeled recently, your hotel may not be functioning at 100% (if for no other reason than that staff may be off helping family rebuild).

Also, diving and snorkeling may be affected -- hurricanes stir up muck and cause a lot of run-off, so be prepared to have your watersports compromised.

There may be a lot of rain (often quite regular, every morning or every afternoon), but it is warm rain, and makes for a nice excuse to sit under an awning and sip a drink.
posted by Forktine at 8:23 PM on September 2, 2007

I'd say grab some insurance and go for it... but then I booked my trip to Egypt straight after a terrorist attack.
posted by pompomtom at 9:11 PM on September 2, 2007

No such thing as a free lunch. You get what you pay for. Etc.

It's cheap for a reason: your holiday might get screwed up. (Agreeing with everyone else that the physical risks are very small.)

I'd be willing to take that chance if the prices are really cheap. But I have 30 days' holiday. If this is your 5 days for the whole year, you may may want to be more conservative.
posted by TrashyRambo at 10:48 PM on September 2, 2007

I have been a few time in hurricane season.
One time during a small hurricane.
It was pretty fun. It poured and poured a few days - tremendous seas (I did get stung by jellyfish but then again I wasnt supposed to be in the water).
Then the weather was fine for about 5 days.
posted by beccaj at 12:59 AM on September 3, 2007

My basic level of experience visiting hurricane prone areas suggests that a given place seem to get hit directly by a damaging hurricane once every 25-30 years. So the odds of your hotel being in the path of a big one during your visit are only going to be about 1 in 300. If it does happen then, as others have suggested, your chance of being killed are very low. The chances of your visit being being disrupted by a hurricane that turns out not to hit you are considerably higher - perhaps one in 5. The level of disruption may vary from worrying about the prospect of a far off storm coming your way to a full evacuation with flight disruptions and insurance claims. Providing you are willing to view the risk with a frisson of excitement rather than constant apprehension I would urge you to grab the bargain.
posted by rongorongo at 2:32 AM on September 3, 2007

I lived in the Virgin Islands for a few years. You should definitely make the trip. The chance of this being an issue for you is very small. There are risks in everything we do; this is a small one.
posted by Slenny at 5:12 AM on September 3, 2007

We go to the Outer Banks in NC during Sept for this very reason. Beach houses that were $2000 a week in Aug are well under $1000 in mid-Sept. We've been 4 times and have been chased home early by a Hurricane once.

Read the fine print closely on any trip insurance you buy. Most of those policies only pay if you are subject to a mandatory evacuation. If you chose to leave early do to an approaching hurricane you will get nothing back.
posted by COD at 6:00 AM on September 3, 2007

Millions of pepole live there all year round. Go for it!
posted by LarryC at 7:04 AM on September 3, 2007

Then the weather was fine for about 5 days.

That's the case in my experience of North Carolina hurricanes; the days after a hurricane passes always have the most beautiful weather. So if you do get hit by one and don't have to evacuate, you'll probably have some fine weather after.
posted by mediareport at 7:28 AM on September 3, 2007

I live in the Caribbean. I have to say that there are places that are outside the usual path of the hurricanes and never have problems with them (other than mild rains) like Trinidad & Tobago, Venezuela or Colombia. So, depending on where you are planning to go, you might not even realize you are "close" to a hurricane (even when the hurricane is kinda close to where you are you'll get some clear and sunny days and some rainy days).

So, along to what everybody is saying, don't blow away the trip. My little addition is that you could even choose one of the places that are outside the path of the hurricanes and not even be bothered by the "inconveniences" of a hurricane.
posted by micayetoca at 8:01 AM on September 3, 2007

Or, you could go to the Tetons and enjoy some mountain air. At 200 dollars a night, the best thing about the Caribbean is underwater (IMHO as a scuba diver) and around hurricane time the water can be murky so I would be annoyed.

It has already been mentioned, it's cheap for a reason because the risk of a storm is elevated. If you understand the risk, then partake. Just don't complain when you are sitting inside watching a tropical rainstorm or seeing a palm tree fly by horizontally.
posted by fluffycreature at 8:16 AM on September 3, 2007

What slenny and LarryC (an most everyone else) said. Any given island or locale only gets hit once every few decades. And even the likelihood of a hurricane happening somewhere close enough to mess up your travel is not very large.
posted by ibmcginty at 1:42 PM on September 3, 2007

Any given island or locale only gets hit once every few decades.

Not quite. Jamaica and Cuba get hit almost by every other hurricane and Honduras, Guatemala and southern Mexico will surely get hit at least once every season, but in essence, yeah, there are a lot of spots that don't get hit every season, and some of them who don't ever get hit, and are beautiful, paradise-like Caribbean sites.
posted by micayetoca at 5:08 PM on September 3, 2007

This is a really typical article about an oncoming hurricane. Note how tourists are deeply inconvenienced, but not left in danger (except for the ones who chose to stay behind); compare to the experience of the locals. What this article doesn't mention, but is a risk you will face as a hurricane-season tourist, is that there is are cascading flight cancellations each time there is a storm that might leave you stuck in the airport in Miami or Montego Bay or wherever for a couple of days.

From the article:

Planes shuttled tourists from island resorts in a desperate airlift Monday as Hurricane Felix bore down on Honduras and Belize. But thousands of Miskito Indians were stranded along a swampy coastline where the Category 4 storm was expected to make landfall.

Grupo Taca Airlines provided special free flights to the mainland, quickly touching down and taking off again to scoop up more tourists. ...

Provincial health official Efrain Burgos said shelters were being prepared, and medicine and sanitation kits were being brought in, but that 18,000 people must find their own way to higher ground.

'We're asking the people who are on the coasts to find a way to safer areas, because we don't have the capability to transport so many people,' he said. 'The houses are made of wood. They're going to be completely swept away. They're not safe.'

So if you had taken your vacation in Belize, you would now be stuck in a hotel in the capital, trying to find out when you can get a flight out, and grumpy that you are having to pay for new hotel and getting no refund for the old one.
posted by Forktine at 6:18 PM on September 3, 2007

Barbados is just outside of the caribbean proper, and it often misses the full force of the tropical storms and hurricanes that blight Jamaica / Dominican republic etc. You're not guaranteed to be safe there, but you have a better chance than in other islands. My wife and I had a vacation in Barbados a few years ago, flying out while a hurricane was in full force, and they were in the process of moving holidaymakers on Antigua to emergency accomodation and cancelling all flights in and out (Jamaica was later pretty comprehensively trashed too). Barbados was totally unaffected - made the seas quite interesting for a couple of days, but that was all.
posted by bifter at 3:17 AM on September 4, 2007