Puerto Vallarta, Mexico ? Hurricane Kenna roared ashore north of this resort city of half-priced beers and breathtaking sunsets, unleashing a wall of water that ravaged a seafront famous to millions of tourists and sent waves washing through hotel lobbies.

With the hurricane itself dissipated Saturday over northern Mexico, tourists who had come for a relaxed vacation found themselves strolling past beaches littered with concrete and debris the storm had ripped from streets and buildings now guarded by soldiers.

Officials had closed nearly a mile of the usually busy beachfront to all but property owners. Even the stone arches that symbolize the city had been blasted away.

“We had a room facing east, so we really didn’t think that much of it until we saw two feet of water running through the lobby. That got our attention,” said Wayne Johnson, a Minnesota tourist starting the second week of a two-week vacation here.

Fishermen inspect their boats, washed ashore after Hurricane Kenna passed over San Blas, Mexico.

“We really just enjoyed lying by the pool in the sun. But now the pool is filled with sand, so we’re not sure what were going to do,” he said.

Kenna, once a Category 5 hurricane with 160 mph winds, pummeled Puerto Vallarta as it passed by offshore on Friday before slamming into San Blas, a smaller, more rustic tourist town 80 miles to the north.

The National Hurricane Center in Miami said Kenna had dissipated over land as it moved into northeast Mexico, but remnants were merging with a weather system in the northwest Gulf of Mexico.