So we made it to the basement of the hotel. People were pretty calm really, the staff was pretty good, they let us hang around in an open air area. It was mostly closed off and it was still lower than sea level, but the stairs just led to the outside with no doors. So it was pretty windy in this area, but better than being locked in the big room. At one point a wicker chair blew down the stairs and almost hit me in the leg. So then the staff made us go into the room and they closed us in. They had lots of food and a screen that they showed Jerry Maguire in spanish several times. I think they also showed that Air Jorden movie with the cartoon characters. Both very stimulating films. ;) It was getting pretty boring, until the power went out. Now you couldn't see your hand in front of your face. That's the darkness we're talking about. You could hear the ceiling tiles being sucked up above us. That was kind of unnearving. So there we were, in the dark, in the basement, crowded into a big room, in the middle of the Carribean.
Eventually the storm moved on and we were allowed to go back to our rooms. We were pretty lucky, our room was pretty much intact. Some flooding and most of my clean clothes were wet, but overall, it was ok. At first we didn't dare complain because the villiage was destroyed. We felt pretty lucky. A lot of the people in the main hotel weren't as lucky. There were smashed windows and really beat up rooms that got hit hard. We had met some Americans earlier who were pretty upset now because the air traffic control tower at the airport in Santa Domingo was blown over and no flights were able to move. So they had to stay at the hotel. The hotel would not comp the rooms to them, even though they weren't really useable anyway. They wanted like $250 US/night for them. So these guys started building a group of people that were basically walking around complaining. We had nothing better to do, so we joined them. Stupid stupid stupid.
We slept in our room that night and the next morning we ran into one of the guys from that group. Apparently at 6am, the hotel sent armed guards to escort the American guy and his gf off the resort!! They asked about the Canadian guys, but they said they didn't know where we were. WHEW! So that morning we were put on a bus and taken to the other side of the island, where the hurricane didn't hit.
Before we left, we walked around the village and offered to help people pick up their stuff, but they were pretty resistant and generally annoyed that we were even there.