Hurricane Jimena slammed Mexico's Baja California peninsula with howling winds on Tuesday and drenched the upscale Los Cabos resort area where tourists hunkered in boarded-up hotels.
The storm's force eased as it neared land and the U.S. National Hurricane Center said Jimena was now a Category 3 storm with winds of 115 mph and stronger gusts, rather than an extremely dangerous Category 4.
Sheets of rain poured from dark gray skies as Jimena's winds buffeted the tip of the peninsula, home to world-class golf courses, yachting marinas and five-star hotels.
"We were tourists, now we're just stuck here," said Karl Weber, 40, of Birmingham, Alabama, as he peeked out at the storm from his hotel's hallway. He and his wife had been diving up the coast in Cabo Pulmo and their flight home was canceled.
The resort appeared to have avoided the worst of the storm, which was projected to make landfall in a sparsely populated area farther north early on Wednesday.
Jimena was about 90 miles northwest of Cabo San Lucas and moving northwest at 13 mph.
Mexico has no oil installations or significant coffee or mining interests in the area. Cabo San Lucas port was closed.
An Organization of Economic Cooperation and Development meeting of officials from dozens of countries to discuss tax havens had to be moved from Los Cabos to Mexico City.
There were no immediate reports of damage to property, said Jose Gajon, the head of civil protection in Baja California Sur state.
Earlier, staff at swanky hotels nailed boards over windows, wrapped exposed furniture with plastic and turned conference rooms into storm shelters with camp bedding and board games.
A beachfront hotel at Cabo San Lucas tied a fountain statue of the sea god Neptune to palm trees and anchored a lobby chandelier to the ground with ropes to stop them blowing away.
Poor families, hotel workers and builders huddled in shelters in schools after 5,000 people were evacuated.
Torrential rain flooded main roads, turned streets in one shanty town into muddy rivers and caused a sewage system in the town of San Jose del Cabo to overflow.
"I've never experienced anything remotely like this," said real estate investor Reg Wilson, 36, from Orange County, California. "I have no idea what to expect. We don't have a lot of options so we just have to ride this out."
Jimena came close to becoming a Category 5 storm -- the top of the Saffir-Simpson scale and potentially devastating -- but weakened as it approached land.
Sheltering in a school, Mexicans from a slum just north of Los Cabos fretted that their flimsy homes could blow away or sink into mud.
"People are really worried," said Ilda Ramirez, 33, who lives in a shack made from cardboard and scrap materials. "I know we could end up losing everything."
Additional reporting by Susy Buchanan in Los Cabos; writing by Catherine Bremer; Editing by John O'Callaghan
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