Puerto Rico the Good & Bad

Welcome to Puerto Rico, one the most beautiful places I’ve ever seen, even rainy days are blessed with sunshine. The people for the most part are friendly. My neighbors are very nice.


Sam’s Club and Walmart stores are pretty much the same. Prices are higher since we’re on a little island, but things are accessible. Roadside vendors have the best fruits and vegetables, avocados you can only dream about back in the states.

Roadside vendors cater to locals. Returning customers are their bread and butter. The first time English speaking people buy from the vendor, we have to expect a higher price. I speak to them in my best Spanish to tell them I live here now. All have asked me where I live and do I like Puerto Rico. Many of these guys will then start speaking English. I usually recognize their English accents immediately.

On an island this size, chances are you’ll see people again, so making friends comes easy.

There are so many wonderful views here. We’re view junkies, if we see something pretty we’ll stop and stare. The view from our porch requires hours of inspection daily. The cattle are in different parts of the pasture and the clouds are so close.

Before you go thinking this is paradise, the utilities suck, in my opinion. I take that back, a bit. The electric company is not bad. Had minimal difficulties with electric, most problems have been weather related, which is expected.

Almost every day the water has been out for all or part of the day, today, 1/10/13, 6:20 pm, no water. By night it’s usually been back on, but since I use a clothes line to dry, washing clothes at night just feels wrong. Or more likely, I just don’t think about it at night. This daily outage pales in comparison to the year in which the water was out for eight months solid. Trucks would fill the rooftop reservoirs, if you were home when they happened by. Some days during that time I thought I would fall out of love with Puerto Rico, but that hasn’t happened.

The Puerto Rican Phone Company is giving me fits. I have an internet adaptor stick on a month to month basis, which I have for years. It sucks, forgive me, there’s no other way to say it. Actually it’s worse this time than the last time we were here. Within the week I’ve been down to the office for issues ranging from not being able to communicate with the server to SIM card not being activated. Five trips to Arecibo, I am having the same problems. I decided to give up the unreliable stick for a land line and internet combo the company offers. After filling out all the paper work, the guy tells me to stand in another line to find out why I have an outstanding balance and so am not eligible for further service. Since I’ve always been on a month to month basis, how could it be you say. Yeah, that’s what I said. I stood in the next line. The new man said, “You owe money,” I said, “No, show me for what.” He then told me I would have to call the company to find out for what. It didn’t come up on his computer screen.

“I am here at the company to do business. You call the department. I came all the way down here to get something. Let’s solve this now.”

“You can call the company on our phone, the man replied. He was kind enough to dial for me. When the prompts came on in Spanish he pressed the number for English option only to languish on hold. He hung up on his own company multiple times, and started complaining to me.

The phone company said that I skipped out on two months, about $75, which no one at the store could understand because it was clearly a month to month product. Now, being just a fabulous guy, my agent said, “If I would pay for one month, they would sacrifice the other.” After over an hour standing to discuss this with them, I agreed to pay the month. The agent politely helped me through the payment machine, smiled when he told me I could apply for the product I wanted, the house phone and internet service, in three days, when my account balance was at zero.

The moral to the story is that, unless you have a high tolerance for long lines and endless bullshit, Puerto Rico may not be the place for you. What helps make it tolerable foe me is that once settled, I, usually, only have the water company to bitch about.

There you have the good and the bad. The ugly is the animals starving in the streets, but that’s another story.