Dream trip ended in nightmare hurricane evacuation – but Fort Myers bounced back

FORT Myers Beach is open for business — and believe me, that’s not a sentence I thought would be written any time soon.

Not after a dream stay there that ended in the nightmare of evacuation from the path of Hurricane Ian.

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That was on the last Tuesday in September. By the Friday, this hidden gem on Florida’s south-west coast had been reduced to matchsticks by the state’s most devastating storm in 500 years.

This was where Ian hit land, wrecking hotels, washing away homes, picking up boats and dropping them onto roofs.

You just couldn’t get your head around the scale of chaos that rained down on a resort where, just a a few days earlier, you’d stood under a palm tree watching the most perfect sunset with the most blissful feeling of peace.

For this to happen any time would have been disastrous enough for a community so reliant on tourism.

On the eve of their high season, though, the autumn and winter months when hordes migrate from the chilly north?

Heartbreaking, absolutely heartbreaking.

Watching the news those next few days, it felt like Fort Myers wouldn’t see another tourist in years. How could they come back from this? Where would they even start?

The answer is that they started the way Americans always start, by telling themselves the words Can Do and getting stuck in. By no one waiting for someone else to do the dirty work, by pitching in and looking after their own little corner, then asking who else around them needed help.

With that attitude, the impossible becomes possible. Which is why, by the week before Christmas, two out of every three rooms in town was ready to rock once more. Waterfront bars were back up and bouncing. Restaurants where you go as much for the incredible views as the mouthwatering menus were taking bookings.

By the second day of 2023, full access had been restored to sensational little islands like Sanibel and Captiva which had taken Ian’s first almighty hit.

From utter despair just three months before, there was a determination sweeping from the smart Downtown streets to the chilled-out beaches that told the world: This place is gonna be better than ever.

I can’t wait to go back and find out for myself that it’s true. Because it was already pretty damn good in the calm before the storm. The first great joy of the trip for my much better half Sonia and I was flying into Tampa Airport rather than our usual Florida arrival point of Orlando.

The place is a revelation, fast and efficient and ultra-modern — with a whole pile of awards to prove it — as well as only being a ten-minute drive from our overnight digs at the Hilton Tampa Downtown, before heading on to the seaside.

Flying to Tampa opens up a resort like Fort Myers Beach to British tourists who might not have given it a thought before now — though to be honest, even if we go back to Disney or Universal it’d now be via Tampa, as it really does take so much stress out of getting there.

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Next morning, after a great night’s sleep and a quite outstanding breakfast in a restaurant/coffee shop/bookshop called Oxford Exchange, we picked up a couple of Riverwalk Passes that get you into eight water-front attractions, though time only allowed us to see the excellent Museum of Art then take a Pirate Water Taxi tour before lunch at the Columbia Restaurant, set in the city’s History Center.

Again, though, this is a city we’ll be back to and next time for far longer, because it has a terrific, young, modern vibe interwoven with centuries of Cuban and Native American heritage.

Anyway, from there it was a two-hour drive to Fort Myers Beach and a four-night stay at the Neptune Resort — a great base to use; the apartments are comfy, with full kitchen facilities, there are two lovely pools and — joy of joys — hammocks stretched between palm trees on the sugary sand.

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No amount of money chucked at the most luxurious accommodation could buy you the sunset we fell in love with every single night. I keep a photo of it as my laptop screensaver as a constant reminder of just how perfect life can be for free.

We arrived in time to catch the final few nights of the Island Hopper music festival — of which more another day, but which is well worth timing your visit for — and did our level best not just to see as many gigs as possible, but to eat and drink in as many places as possible without actually having to roll back to the ranch.

Favourites? Get yourself to Doc Ford’s, right down at the harbour where the town’s fresh fish catches arrive, to Snug Harbor — under the bridge linking the beach to the mainland — and to Island View, six floors up in the Lana Kai hotel.

Away from the beach and stuffing your face, an absolute must is an visit to the Edison Ford Winter Estates, where legendary inventors Thomas Edison and Henry Ford built houses and workshops next door to each other and where many of their original contraptions — an early SUV with a built-in church organ, anyone? — are on show in grounds blooming with plants and trees imported from their travels around the globe.

GO: FORT MYERS

GETTING THERE: BA fly from Edinburgh to London City then Gatwick to Tampa from £536pp return.

The whole area whispered the word Relax in my ear and I was only too happy to oblige; well, until those pesky evacuation warnings kicked in.

That happened after we moved Downtown to the harbourside Luminary Hotel, where at 5pm on Monday night every mobile phone in the city got the official message to hunker down and where by 7am the following morning we were ordered to get as far away as possible as quickly as our hire car would carry us.

What followed for so many people we’d come to see as friends doesn’t bear thinking about.

What happens next for them and their unique slice of Gulf gorgeousness?

That’s the bit I can’t wait for.

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