Dario Lopez-Mills, Associated Press A woman makes her way among hundreds of sleeping tourists sheltering from Hurricane Emily yesterday in downtown Cancun, Mexico. Click photo for larger image.

PLAYA DEL CARMEN, Mexico -- It wasn't exactly the all-inclusive, glitzy resort vacation most had planned: Sleeping on thin, foam pads thrown down on a gymnasium floor, as cold rain and wind seeped through the ceiling.

Hurricane Emily turned the white-sand beaches, emerald surf and five-star hotels of Mexico's Mayan Riviera into a rainsoaked, wind-damaged strip of coastline, stranding thousands of tourists and leaving many local residents homeless.

Tourists who spent the night in makeshift shelters emerged yesterday to find hotels struggling to provide services and most restaurants and shops closed. Many went to the Cancun airport, which reopened yesterday, to try to find flights home.

"All night long, cold water was pouring in through the holes in the wall," said Graham Brighton, of Leicester, England, one of about 1,000 people who spent the night on a gymnasium floor in Cancun. "There were just far too many people crammed into one space."

Damage from the hurricane was evident everywhere on the eastern Yucatan's Mayan Riviera, although there were no immediate reports of deaths or serious injuries.

Power was knocked out all along the coast. The wind ripped roofs off luxury hotels, and snapped concrete utility poles in two along a half-mile stretch of highway between Playa del Carmen and the famous resort of Cancun to the north. Plate glass windows were shattered on the ground floors of numerous businesses in Playa del Carmen.

The worst damage was in Puerto Aventuras, 60 miles south of Cancun, and in nearby Tulum, a collection of thatched hut hotels along a secluded strip of beach that is popular with backpackers. The storm's eye came ashore there.

	Dario Lopez-Mills, Associated Press A tourist makes her way through the flooded streets of Playa del Carmen, Mexico yesterday after Hurricane Emily passed through. Click photo for larger image.

About 60,000 tourists were evacuated from Cancun, Tulum, Playa de Carmen and Cozumel, an island just south of Cancun famous for its diving. Interior Secretary Carlos Abascal said the island's mayor reported some minor damage.

As residents of the resorts began wading through knee-deep flood waters to assess damage under a light drizzle, the storm barreled west, out into the Gulf of Mexico.

Many of the thousands who came to the Mayan Riviera for its white sand beaches, emerald surf and all-inclusive resorts were forced to wait on rain-soaked, manicured lawns as hotels reopened and slowly began rechecking guests.

Most restaurants and stores were still boarded up, leaving little to eat or drink. Services like power and water were knocked out by the storm.

As officials emptied a gymnasium-turned-shelter in downtown Cancun, several men pointed to dirty T-shirts they had been wearing for days and asked where they could get a shower.

Leaning into a stiff wind, people carried bottles of water and stepped over downed trees on their way back to their hotels.

Jose Marino, a tourist from Mexico City, sat in the darkened lobby of the Xbalanque Hotel and said he planned to stay there for the rest of his vacation.

"The hotels should have their own generators," he said. "But in general, I think the response to the storm has been excellent."

Some ignored overcast skies and a light drizzle, jumping into hotel pools to escape the sweltering heat. Kids played video games until their batteries ran out.

	Dario Lopez-Mills, Associated Press A tourist sleeps on a beach cot outside of the Copacabana hotel yesterday on the outskirts of Playa del Carmen, a resort town south of Cancun, Mexico. Click photo for larger image.

In the beach town of Playa del Carmen, Andre Dominicus, 32, sat on a bench with two other Dutch tourists, waiting to hear news from their travel agent.

"The local people have been very upbeat, very generous. They've been a lot better than our travel agent," Dominicus said.

Nearby, a group of European tourists grabbed maps and squeegees and helped clean up a hotel whose ground floor had suffered minor flooding.

Alberto Moron, a tourist from El Salvador, sat watching the waves with his 5-month-old daughter and wife.

"We've survived earthquakes and wars," he said. "But this is our first hurricane."

At the Cancun airport, people thronged ticket counters, desperate to leave.

Jesus Pena, a tourist from Andalucia, Spain, who was waiting to hear whether he could leave Cancun late yesterday, said his hotel had packed six people to a room during the storm, and still charged each person $300 a night.

	Dario Lopez-Mills, Associated Press Newlyweds Mikel and Katie Rudolph, of East Grand Forks, Minn., spent their honeymoon in a shelter. Yesterday they were on stand-by at the Cancun airport for a flight to anywhere in the United States. The hotel they were supposed to stay in lost their luggage. Click photo for larger image.

Mikel Rudolph, 25, sat with his new wife, Katie, on a pillow with the two small carry-on bags they managed to salvage from their hotel, which was damaged in the storm.

"We're on standby for any flight to the continental United States," said Mikel Rudolph, of East Grand Forks, Minn. "We'll go anywhere, as long as it's the United States."

He said the all-inclusive resort where they stayed wanted to charge them for the night after the evacuation: "People were getting very greedy."

Officials reported little damage to the ancient pyramids in Tulum or elsewhere, but a special team of archaeologists was to inspect sites throughout Quintana Roo state.

Sitting in the roofless, rainsoaked lobby of the Copacabana Hotel near Puerto Aventuras, Samuel Norrod, of Livingston, Tenn., waited to hear if his travel agent could get flights home for himself, his wife and his 13-year-old granddaughter.

They rode out the storm in the hotel's ballroom.

"We could hear the windows smashing out. The wind would get loud, and then it would get soft again. And then, for about 25 minutes, it got real still," Norrod said, describing the calm eye of the hurricane.

	Dario Lopez-Mills, Associated Press Longino Diaz and his neighbor Yolanda have breakfast in front of their destroyed homes in the town of Playa Aventura, Mexico. While the tourists get to leave, they must find the resources to rebuild their demolished neighborhood. Click photo for larger image.

Farther south, in Puerto Aventuras, where the eye of the storm hit land, a poor, Mexican family of 10 people waded among the ruins of their five shacks and wondered where they would get the $5,600 -- the price of most tourists' vacations -- needed to rebuild.

"We just want a roof over our heads again," said 21-year-old Remigio Kamul.

The large family crowded into a brick room during the storm.

"The children were crying," said Kamul's mother, 46-year-old Maria Concepciona. "We were hugging each other. The door was banging in the wind."

Emily's wind speeds had soared to as much as 135 mph, making it a fierce Category 4 storm when it hit the Yucatan. It weakened to Category 2 as it passed over the peninsula early yesterday with maximum sustained winds of 100 mph.

The hurricane hit Mexico after sweeping across the Caribbean, causing flooding that killed a family of four in Jamaica but sparing the Cayman Islands major damage.

Emily's center eventually churned into the cooler waters north of the peninsula, weakening it further throughout the day. It was a Category 1 storm by evening, with sustained winds of 75 mph. But forecasters expected it to regain force and hit the northeastern Mexican coast "as a major hurricane," as early as last night, the Miami-based National Hurricane Center said.

Mexico's state-run oil company, Petroleos Mexicanos, or Pemex, evacuated 15,000 oil workers from Gulf rigs in the storm's path.

	Dario Lopez-Mills, Associated Press An tourist carries his luggage over people sitting on the floor of the Cancun, Mexico airport. He was among thousands of tourists trying to get out of Cancun a day after hurricane Emily caused widespread damage and forced thousands of tourist to be taken to makeshift shelters. Click photo for larger image.