PR 3 Puerto Carro

I ended up renting a car because I needed to get out of the Costa del Sol looking Condado beach area, which had nothing authentic. There is no public transport on the island. The bus from Condado to Old San Juan for instance should run every 20 minutes, but I tried to take it twice and I had to wait 45 minutes each time. Getting out of San Juan to the rest of the country is impossible without a car. Unless you would rent a sailing boat and sail around it, but I don’t have a sailing license (yet). Day excursions cost way too much money (example: three hours in Ponce, the second city of the country, from San Juan: 85 dollar) so I got myself a Lancer for a few days and guaranteed myself some adventure.

The craziest thing in Puerto Rico are the drivers. Or the traffic in general. My god. People say that Belgium is undriveable if that’s a word, but it’s nothing compared to PR. I kind of liked it though. It’s challenging and definitely not boring. You don’t really enjoy the view that much as you have to be 100 percent concentrated, but I somehow felt like driving in one of those Playstation games, never knowing what would come up next. Puerto Ricons don’t use their indicators. Very frustrating. They also stop without any sign of warning. Even on the highway. They also don’t drive in lines. I guess they will be flabbergasted if you told them that a highway has two lanes in order to have traffic ride in two lines. Then it gets confusing as the cars are American and have mileage, just like the speed limit is indicated in mileage, but the distances are put in kilometres. Signs appear and disappear making sure you’ll not find your destination easily.

The big thrill of driving a car in Puerto Rico is that everyone constantly warns you about carjacking. Of course the guide book mentioned it, but also the employee at Avis who gave me the advice to stay on the main roads only and not to drive at night. I wonder why drug addicts would try and steel your car to sell it for cash as it was my impression that everyone on the island already has a car! There are some 3,5 million people living in Puerto Rico. I saw at least 2 million cars. I thought it was amazing that every single car on the highway was manned by the driver only. Carpooling still needs to be introduced there. Maybe they ship the stolen cars to New York, where 2 million more Boricua’s (nickname of Puerto Ricans) live. I don’t know. However, I made a slight mistake of driving through the inland routes. I went on this panoramic route, which was beautiful, but I had no time to really enjoy it that much. It was a rollercoaster ride over hills and mountains with hundreds of hairpin bends with crazy conductores popping out of nothing almost crashing into my rental car. I saw two accidents in an hour drive on that road! But more scary were the many abandoned cars along the road. I also saw some bush fires on the way, which made me think of my own Final Destination movie. Burned out cars along the road, bush fires, accidents… I was sure they were signs of my near death. Very scary thought to concentrate on when driving on hilly and bendy roads. I made it in one piece though. Still, it would have been cooler with someone in the car!