"I guess we're screwed," said Paul Garvey from St Louis, Missouri, who missed his charter flight home. An Italian tourist screamed at police trying to maintain order.

Some 4,000 people flew out of Cancun, while 7,000 more departed from the city of Merida. Mexico's Tourism Ministry said all tourists who wanted to leave would be gone by Sunday.

Wilma rampaged along Mexico's "Maya Riviera" late last week before it turned sharply, whacking Cuba and southern Florida. It was well off the US East Coast on Tuesday and losing strength as it headed for Canada's Atlantic provinces.

Fierce winds and flooding from Wilma, one of the strongest Atlantic storms recorded, killed at least seven people and battered Cancun, nearby Playa del Carmen, the scuba diving island of Cozumel and smaller resorts along the coast.

Many locals, especially poor people housed in flimsy shacks, lost their homes and belongings. Hotels, shops and other buildings lay in ruins.

About 20,000 vacationers spent four or five days in smelly, cramped shelters where food and drink were rationed and some ended up defecating in buckets because the toilets overflowed.

"We were like animals," said Jay Abrams from New Jersey.

Others blamed the US government for not getting them out in time. "Tell Bush he left his people here," one woman shouted from a crowd of American tourists waiting outside a hotel.

Angry seas rushed several hundred yards (metres) inland, washing away much of Cancun's soft sand. The popular Playa Delfines beach was swallowed by the storm surge.

'VERY UGLY'

"It's very ugly. I'd say there were 30 metres (98 feet) before and now there are less than 10 (33 feet)," said restaurant worker Auric Oliver, looking down at the narrowed strip of sand.

The beach in front of the luxury Marriott hotel was completely washed away. Huge chunks of concrete debris lay around the badly damaged building.

Cancun was planned and built from scratch on a spit of mosquito-infested sand in the late 1970s. It lost many of its beaches to Hurricane Gilbert in 1988 but replaced them with sand brought from elsewhere at great expense.

"It's not that bringing sand back is a big problem, it's working out a system to keep it in place." said Eloan Galindo, head of Cancun municipality's ecology department.

The devastated beaches and the heavy damage to the luxury hotels along the coast, known as the Maya Riviera, appeared to spell ruin for the key winter holiday season.

The tourism ministry estimated the damage at $800 million but hotel owners said it was nearer $1.5 billion.

Despite the devastation, Cancun was returning to life.

Vendors sold sun hats, leather sandals and sea shell necklaces amid the rubble of a crafts market.

A honeymooning couple sunbathed on the patio of their hotel.

"It's gorgeous. We're here so we might as well make the most of it," said bikini-clad Nikki Mathis, 25, from Indiana.

Cruise ships making stopovers at Caribbean resorts in Mexico are having to use substitute ports because of damage to piers and a lack of open bars and restaurants.