16 partygoers make it back to Newport after riding out Mexico hurricane

A group of Newport Beach residents who were stranded for two days in hurricane-torn Pedregal, Mexico, arrived home safely late Tuesday.

Jeff Reed, a 29-year-old groom-to-be, hitched a ride on a military plane to Tijuana on Tuesday evening with 15 friends who were attending his bachelor party in the town near Cabo San Lucas. Hurricane Odile hit late Sunday, damaging the vacation rental where they were staying and sending them to a hotel Monday night.

“A cab driver who we saw dropping people off on the street … said we should go to the airport. They were loading people onto these old beat-up military planes,” said Andrew Nahin, 26, who was part of Reed’s group.

The hurricane left Cabo San Lucas International Airport heavily damaged, and commercial flights have not yet resumed there. The military flights are part of an effort to get stranded tourists to Tijuana or Mexico City.

All 16 members of Reed’s group crammed into a van for a ride to the airport, Nahin said Wednesday. “It was sweaty, hot. We were all miserable, hungry, dehydrated,” he said.

Nahin and fellow partygoer Murphy Megonigal described storm-ravaged Cabo San Lucas as “utter chaos,” with riots, rampant looting and overturned cars. Business owners with shotguns and rifles stood guard to try to prevent looting, they said.

“It was pretty much the gnarliest thing I’ve ever seen in my entire life,” said Megonigal, 27.

The group had to climb over a downed “arrivals/departures” sign blocking the road before they could get to the airport entrance at 9 a.m. Tuesday, Megonigal said. After about eight hours of waiting in humid 90-degree weather, the group boarded a plane.

“We finally pushed our way through and got onto one of those evacuation planes and they took us to this Tijuana military base,” Nahin said.

From there, the group took a military escort to the border and booked a train to Orange County.

“We’re just trying to recover here,” Reed said.

For Megonigal, who had lost contact with his fianceé, Brittany Paul, who was home in Newport Beach, the homecoming was emotionally overwhelming.

“I definitely have a new lease on life and a new appreciation for everything,” Megonigal said. “For how Westernized you think Cabo San Lucas is, it all goes out the door when something like this happens. You realize you’re not in a first-world country anymore.”

In the storm’s wake, the partygoers lived on four bottles of water and bags of chips, Megonigal said.

“They came back extremely dirty and extremely hungry,” Paul said.

Fifteen other Newport Beach residents who were part of a separate bachelor party have not made contact with family or friends in California since Monday, Nahin said.