I had never witnessed that level of destruction or devastation before. The eye of the storm hit around 10:30pm, so most of the guests were sheltered in the hotel ballroom. What made this storm unique and the reason it caught the Southern Baja Peninsula so off guard was the fact that it rapidly intensified and changed course. It was originally forecast to head West and weaken as it went out to sea, but instead it made an almost 90 degree turn and headed directly for Cabo San Lucas as a Category 4. It was a Category 3 when it actually made landfall, but the millibars of pressure in the eye were extremely low for a Category 3, and the hurricane slowed and caused massive destruction.
Because of the initial forecast, people were not being encouraged to evacuate. Our hotel was prepared as possible and technically designated as a hurricane shelter with the ability of a Cat 3 storm, and had excellent safety procedures in place. But no one expected the storm to be as bad as it was. The hotel had a shelter set up in the hotel ballroom, but also told guests that if they felt more comfortable staying in their rooms then they were more than welcome to do so, so long as they kept the windows and doors completely shut and did not venture outside. At the point of their original instruction, the hurricane was still not expected to be such a massive threat.
My friends and I originally thought we would "ride it out" in our hotel room, and were almost poking fun at the evacuation room that was set up. We figured we would hole up in our room with food and wine and watch movies until the government formally shut down the power grid, as planned and mentioned in the bulletins they were sending us. Everything was going "as planned" for us until about 8:30pm. The sliding glass doors were shaking violently, and then all of a sudden a large portion of a palm tree snapped off and hit our window. It didn't shatter, fortunately, but the scare was enough for us to put all of our things in the bathroom, grab our passports and wallets, and make a beeline for the hotel ballroom. At that point in our room, there was water already starting to gurgle get sucked out of the toilet, and the shower was making a howling noise. It also took 3 of us to pull the hotel door open because of the low pressure suction. The hotel hallways were partially outside and exposed to the elements.