M and E Live by the Sea: Enfermo de los Carros / Sick of the Cars

It's only been 10 days since Maria and I landed in San Juan, but we are exhausted. We intended to start our lives here by searching for a car so we could turn in the rental we picked up at the airport. But then two days after our arrival, Maria caught a cold. Yes, a cold, in Puerto Rico. Two days after that, I caught the same cold.

So, managing through these colds, we were able to visit Maria's lab and say hello to everyone, get some paperwork done, and observe the amazingly congested traffic in San Juan. Traffic here is bad, really bad. Our current home is 13.4 km (8.3 mi) from Maria's lab, yet it takes at least 30 minutes to get there if you are lucky. No one signals when they turn, no one looks were they are going, and everyone's car looks like it's been in a demolition derby. Neither of us enjoy being in traffic so, although we enjoy the avocado and tangerine trees and the view of San Juan from our home, we decided we need to find a closer place. Luckily, our landlord/realtor extraordinaire, Toni, is on the case, and we have 3 appointments tomorrow! But we still needed to get a car. Here is a video of the drive from our house on the hill to the main road which leads to the highway 4X speed (coming soon).

Cars here are much more expensive than in the states. First, they charge the dealers/importers an excise tax, then a state tax on top of that, and then a municipal tax on top of that. It's kind of a bum deal because the local transit system is unreliable and doesn't cover much of the metro area. The politicians know that everyone needs a car and so they tax them to the max. Did I ever mention how much I love government? Anyway, we visited a few dealerships and quickly became disillusioned as dealer after dealer attempted to sell us cars that were literally falling apart. We didn't want to spend a lot, but we thought we were being realistic. So, we turned to Classificados Online, the Craigslist of Puerto Rico, if you will. We searched and found many cars in our price range that seemed pretty quality. Unfortunately relatively few sellers ever got back to us, likely due to their ads being abandoned or just not wanting to deal with people in English. We did get to check out a few cars, but even then they had issues, rattling noises, bald tires, missing jacks, and lots of scratches and dents. If you ever find yourself looking for a car in Puerto Rico, you are going to need to look past the scratches and dents, but we were not willing to settle for garbage.

So we took a small break from cars and focused on finding Bed, Bath & Beyond to pick up some needed home supplies. Long story short, Google maps is only marginally helpful in Puerto Rico, do not trust it with your life. We had to take a break in our search for lunch at a nice little restaurant serving up local and Cuban favorites. While enjoying some some wonderful tostones (fried plantains), I bit right through one and into my fork. I heard a loud crunch and yeah, I chipped my tooth. Maria says it isn't bad, but I still don't like it. So, adding injury to illness, I was ready to give up but Maria, coming off of her cold, made sure I got back on track. After we found BB&B and got what we needed and made it home, we were able to get some much needed rest.

We were seriously considering just renting cars the rest of our time here, but made the decision to head to Caguas - a small town south of San Juan and only 10 minutes on the backroads from our house on the hill - and visit some more used car dealerships.

It was a hot day and I didn't want to get out of the car but many of the dealers just put a piece of paper in the window with the price written in small type. So naturally, Maria made me get out of the car and walk down the rows to see the prices. We managed to find a reasonably priced Suzuki Grand Vitara at the first place we stopped but we wanted to keep looking and told them we would come back. We drove all the way down into Caguas, a city seemingly made up of Car dealers and restaurants, and began our search on the other side of the road. About halfway back from our starting point, we found a Ford dealer that also sold used cars. There we meet our friendly salesman Ronaldo or "Ronnie." He was pleasant and seemed very honest after Maria asked about a Jeep Liberty and he told her that she didn't want it because that model has too many problems. Maybe he was keeping it for himself, but I tended to believe him because I would never drive a Jeep Liberty. We sweated our way around the lot (did I mention it was HOT?) and finally settled on a 2005 Volvo V50. It looked nice, but I don't know anything about Volvo's and neither does Maria. We took it for a spin and heard something funny... nothing! We were pleasantly surprised because every other car we looked at at that price were really just garbage. After the test drive, my first question to Ronnie was, "What's wrong with it?" He laughed at me and pointed again to the rear quarter panel where he earlier had explained an accident had occurred. So I had Maria test all the lights and just as I thought the turn signal and brake light on that side weren't working... then I saw the disconnected cable, plugged it in and voila!, the lights came on. So now I was seriously looking hard for what was wrong with this car. I checked the engine (not that I know that much) and the whole compartment was clean, I tried to pull the wheels off the car but they didn't go anywhere, the treads looked decent, the windows were fine. The only thing I could see was that the wipers needed to be replaced, and, of course, there were dents and dings and some sun damage to the paint but, from our experience, that was to be expected. I looked at Maria and we had only one move left, to make an offer. So we did. Ronnie asked his manager and to our surprise they took the offer. Now I got really skeptical but I didn't know what to do other than to buy it because it was the first time someone actually tried to sell us a reasonable car. So we bought it. And now we own our first Volvo!