Hi all:
This is my first post here Ive been living in Puerto Rico (San Juan metro area) for the past year. My wife is active duty military, so were 1 year into our 3-year tour here. Ive been following this site for the past year and received some really good information and tips thanks to all. I thought Id share my experiences so far theres a couple of people contemplating moving here and perhaps my two cents can offer some more information. I am not an expert by any means, and everything here is still very new to me, but here are some things that Ive experienced in the metro area:
-Rentals:
*Do your research on where youd like to live and try to spend a couple of weeks as close as you can to your desired location. We started out in an apartment in Old San Juan. Its a relatively new building and has many nice amenities generator (our power went out frequently), cistern, controlled access, gym, pool, walking distance to everything in OSJ, etc. Its a beautiful building with great harbor views but theres a park across the street that has many concerts. This may be great for some people, but not us. Many weekends were VERY loud into the wee hours of the morning. It is also next to the Capitol Building and quite often there are protests and noisy caravans going by.
*Lease. Consider getting a lawyer to carefully go over your lease. We had about 20 items that needed to be addressed.
*Utilities. Electricity is very expensive here. We only used the air conditioners in the living room at night and in the bedroom while sleeping. They were wall units, so we sealed off the other rooms. We kept the temperature at 78 degrees when the a/c was on and our average electric bill was $350 or so. Couldnt figure out the water bill. It varied tremendously with no rhyme or reason. We were gone for nearly one month and that was our highest bill.
-Language:
*Try and learn as much Spanish as you can. True in the tourist areas most people speak English, but youll be more comfortable with an understanding of the language with day-to-day living. We had the landlords handymen come over to fix things after we moved in. They didnt speak any English, so needless to say it was quite a challenge in my elementary Spanish to explain to them what needed to be fixed (the landlord didnt relay the information), and that the part they installed in the toilet (I dont even know what its called in English) was the wrong size. If you arent comfortable with Spanish, consider getting a friend or hiring someone to help you through important things. There are relocation specialists that deal in this sort of thing. By the way, it took them 7 additional visits spread out over 2 months to get our discrepancies taken care of. Which brings me to my next point:
-Patience
*Be sure to pack patience and lots of it moving is stressful, especially to a whole different environment with a different culture and expectations. Things happen on their own schedule here. In my casual observations, Ive found that things (on average) take 2-3 times longer to get things done here. For example, a store line that would take 10 minutes in the US can easily be 20-30 minutes here. No big deal really just an observation. If youre normally used to getting a bunch of things done in a day, plan on a couple of days, especially dealing with utility companies. Getting internet/cable/electric hook-ups can take a while in some cases. Weve lucked out, but friends of ours had waited six weeks to get cable/internet. Appointments of any kind here are interesting. When we called to have cable installed, they didnt give a date or time they just showed up one day. We werent home, but lucky enough they came back later in the afternoon. It can be somewhat frustrating when we moved out of our apartment, we had a meeting scheduled with the moving company at 9:00. At 9:45 they called and said theyd meet us at 11:00. Nothing we could really do, we just had to roll with it.
-Medical
*I consider myself very lucky in the sense that with our insurance I have access to what many people here call the best medical facility in San Juan. Even so, it is a totally different experience to what Im used to back in the states. Ive only been there a handful of times for routine visits, and I hope that I dont need to go for anything serious. A friend of mine (born and raised on the island) said to be very cautious with medical facilities here. His words were, If you have a headache, take Tylenol. If you have anything more serious, take JetBlue.
-Driving
*Driving here is interesting, particularly the metro area. People often say that drivers here are very aggressive. Im not sure if that would be the word Id use. I think its that the culture of driving is very different here certainly not a casual experience. You really have to be on your toes at all times. Im a defensive driver by nature and thats helped me. After you get used to it, it is quite entertaining observing what goes on here on the roads.
Hopefully this may help out others. Like I said, everything here is so new, so Im still trying to figure things out. Id echo what many people have said on this forum do your homework, talk to people living here, try to arrange an extended visit, and do everyday things (get a haircut, drive to the supermarket, pharmacy, etc.), and have a back-up plan. Some days knowing that well leave the island in 2 years makes things easier to deal with. There are a lot of neat things here, but there are also things that are very hard to deal with. Living here is certainly not like vacationing here. Thanks, and I hope to contribute more as we continue our journey.