"They´re really moving fast," Latack, a 49-year-old Whirlpool Corp. engineer from Baroda, Michigan, says as he looks out on turquoise-colored waves lapping against the beach.

Almost six months after Hurricane Wilma knocked out all but two of the 145 hotels that account for more than 70 percent of the resort´s US$2.94 billion economy, Cancún is back.

More than 100 hotels have reopened, and the state tourism secretary predicts Mexico´s biggest tourist destination will draw as many visitors this year as in 2004.

Jan de Nul Group NV, the Belgium-based-dredging company, is building the equivalent of two American football fields of beach a day. Working around the clock, it suctions sand from 35 kilometers (22 miles) off shore onto two ships, then blows it out through a 32-inch steel pipe.

"Without beaches, Cancún doesn´t have tourists," says Works Manager Jan Van Merkerk, who has restored beaches for the company around the world.

The outlook was bleak in the aftermath of Hurricane Wilma, which tore through Cancún for three days starting Oct. 20.

Cancún´s resort business accounts for a 17.5 percent of Mexico´s US$11.8 billion tourist market.

At the time, John Welch, New York-based Lehman Brothers´ chief economist for Latin America, said the destruction would slow the economy by 1.6 percentage points. Alejandro Ortiz, an engineer hired to assess damage by the German tourism company TUI AG, said it may take eight months to repair the hotels.

OPPORTUNITY TO RENEW

Cancún has added about 10,000 jobs since then, says Gabriela Rodríguez, 46, tourism secretary for Quintana Roo, the resort´s home state.

"We now have a Cancún with remodeled shopping centers, new hotels and restored beaches," she says. "Wilma, for us, turned into an opportunity to renew everything at one time."

The rebuilding underscores Cancún´s importance in an industry that ranks third for Mexico´s foreign currency earnings after oil exports and money transfers from residents living abroad. The inflows have allowed the country to lower its current account deficit to US$5.7 billion in 2005 from US$7.2 billion in 2004.

Cancún will lure about 3.38 million tourists this year, up from 3.16 million last year even after beginning 2006 with fewer hotel rooms, Rodríguez says in a telephone interview.

Cancún now has 18,000 of its 27,000 hotel rooms operating, and it is expected to be near full capacity by the June summer season.

EXPECTED END DATE

Jan de Nul is getting paid US$20 million from the government to restore 12.5 kilometers of beach in Cancún. The company, which began work Feb. 1, expects to be finished April 15, says van Merkerk.

The repair work is happening faster than in September 1988, after Hurricane Gilbert struck Cancún. It took the government two months to restore electricity, and the beaches were left unrepaired.

After Wilma, electricity and running water were working within two weeks.

Roberto Manzón, 31, is among workers in Cancún who are surprised by the progress. Employed in the hotel industry for more than a decade, he says he thought he would have to leave after seeing the devastation left by Wilma.

"It took several years for things to recover here in Cancún after Gilbert," says Manzón, a bellboy at the Flamingo hotel. "Now the government is more on the ball and already is fixing the beaches."

The city plans to pay for a second round of beach restoration with a special tax on hotels and begin creating dunes for protection against erosion by seeding natural plants, says Ana Patricia Morales, executive director of the Quintana Roo Hotel Association.

The size of the tax, based on the amount of federal beach land used, hasn´t been determined, she says.

Companies are hiring. Martín Vargas, 19, left his fishing village of San Francisco Ixhuatán in the state of Oaxaca for Cancún after his cousin told him businesses are looking for workers.

Vargas makes 850 pesos a week as a convenience-store cashier and plans to enroll in a local college. Back home, work paid less and was only temporary, he says.

"It´s not hard to find work here," Vargas says. "There´s a lot of activity."

Cancún may add 3,000 hotel rooms within two years in a new development called Punto Cancún that has already sold beachfront land, Rodríguez says.

Residents and government officials say they are hoping Cancún will be spared another hurricane, even as forecasters predict this year´s Gulf of Mexico storm season will top last year´s record.

"We don´t want this to happen again for at least another 20 years," Rodríguez says.