The Great Coamo Detour

Side tracked and kicked back…

I’ve been scoping out Clasificados Online looking for a cheap, dependable ride to run around the island in. Plan ‘B’ was to simply rent a car, but I wanted to see how buying a vehicle worked here.

Purely by coincidence, I scored a ride from a couple of guys staying at the Coqui Inn, out to Santa Isabel on the South side of the island. They were “rock & roll roadies” from the mainland on vacation, doing a short road trip to Ponce. Quite a pair of characters.. one had grown up as a kid in Caguas, PR, before moving to the mainland.

I’m lucky to have a Spanish speaking friend in Coamo (not far from Santa Isabel) to help me through this ordeal. Puerto Rico may be part of the US, but Spanish Law dictates the local level process. Vehicle registration works differently here than in the rest of the US. Though you can score your own auto insurance, a ‘no-fault’ plan is bundled with the Marbete (vehicle registration). So the yearly registration update is monitored very closely. AND it transfers when you buy or sell a used car. If you buy a new car, then yes, you might want additional coverage.

The Search: There are no “Park-N-Sell” type lots here, but folks do leave their cars for sale in shopping center lots or off the side of a main road where there is a steady stream of traffic. Clasificados Online functions much like CraigsList classifieds, but is Spanish only. Its the best place to check out anything for sale, used.

The Internet is just taking off here so its somewhat limited.

There are lots of small used car dealers, as well as all the new car dealers you are familiar with. HOWEVER, all the legal documents are in Spanish. Yep, that’s right. But get this, lawyers are very inexpensive here so they are used to close deals and serve as a notary. There is an alternative service you can enlist to help deal with the bureaucratic side of the paperwork equation when buying or selling a car and its pretty cheap. These Gestores, make all the “gestures” for you, pun intended.

This has been a real “2 Steps Forward, One Back” kind of thing. What might have taken a day or 2 has turned into several. I’m not complaining.. I love it here and its allowed me to check on other aspects of what life’s like in Puerto Rico… a sense of the local scene. I’ll report on that in another post.

Related Trivia: Gas is sold by the liter here so it looks cheap at first glance. I did notice that diesel was about the same price as regular, which seems odd since we pay about 20% more for it in Alaska. Always have. Very few of the pumps take debit/credit cards so you have to pre-pay before you pump. All the road signs are in Spanish, but the shapes are the same so its not too hard to figure them out. Speeds are posted in Miles per Hour, but distances are in Kilometers. It was easy for me since I’ve been working in both systems for a long time.

I should be back to my planned route around the island in a couple more days.. hope springs eternal…