Tuesday After Lunch- Another Day in Paradise

Good News, Bad News…

The Good-  I finally scored a Puerto Rican Drivers License!  I got mine today.  I had been fretting over this for quite some time.  When I first moved to PR, not all States had ‘reciprocity’ with Puerto Rico.  That is, only certain States DL’s could be traded across for a new PR license.  Alaska was not one of those States.

To add insult to injury, the written test is in Spanish only, as is the Drivers Manual.

My time was running out as my Alaska license expires the middle of December.

Departamento de Transportacion y Obras Publicas (DTOP)

The rules are the same as the mainland, but with a slight ‘local twist’.  All the sign shapes are the same, but in Spanish.  They drive on the same side of the road as the rest of the US… Speed Limit signs are in miles, but the green ‘distance to’ signs are in kilometers.  It’s also important to watch for the yellow stripe going across the road to identify a school zone… those are 15 mph if not marked, some are posted even lower.  They are easy to miss.  I’m only glossing over a few key details… there are others.

So early last week we decided to check and see what I would need to get a PR License.

Besides surrendering my old license, I was going to need a medical form I downloaded from the net, signed off by my doctor who charged me $15 for ‘document fees’, MY Passport for proof of where I was born (otherwise, I would have needed a certified copy of my Birth Certificate),  MY Social Security Card, Proof of residence based on a bill showing our street address in MY name which is a kilometer mark on a highway and made more difficult because bills are mailed to our PO Box  (the Post Office does not deliver mail house to house in rural areas where there are no house numbers) AND 2 stamps- of $1 and $10 denomination we got from the Departamento de Hacienda (the State Revenue Office).

Since I did not have a bill in my name showing our street address, me first mate had to sign an additional form attesting to my residence and produce the said bill in her name.  At this point, you would normally present this collection of documents to DMV and take the written test.

To my great
pleasure, we discovered that Puerto Rico now has ‘reciprocity’ with all 50 states and Washington DC as well.  So I got to ‘skate’ on taking the written test in Spanish.

Woo Hoo!

Because of where we live, we had the option of going to Ponce or Guayama, but Guayama is our district headquarters.

How to file paperwork with the least amount of Hassle-

For those of us who do not like spending hours or days dealing with the Puerto Rican bureaucracy there is a solution.  Almost every town in PR has a local biz that can deal with submitting your paperwork to the right departments in your behalf.  They know the ‘ins and outs’ of the system.  The fees are very reasonable and worth every dime.  I still had to produce all the paperwork listed above, but they dealt with the rest.  I also still had to make the trip to Guayama to get my picture taken for the new ID.

The gal at ‘Gestores de Licencias Coamo’ directed us through the Guayama DMV facility, over the phone, directly to the guy that took my picture and knew we were coming.  We were in in out of the office in Guayama in only a few minutes.  That office was packed with folks waiting in line for one thing or another… by my count, at least 100 people.  That was on Thursday.  The local service collected up everything and I picked up all of my original documents and new Drivers License on the following Tuesday.  Of note-  They held onto everything until Tuesday so they provided me a temporary license for the week I was without my Passport.  Nor was I thrilled with the fact that someone had stapled my SS card to the electric bill that was submitted.  Not a big deal, but it was already badly beat up.

The service cost me $28 and this Gringo gladly paid it.

Tb be fair, part of that $28 went to drivers licensing fees.  Getting a PR Drivers License had been hanging over me like a black cloud and now it’s gone.  I already registered to vote (and did) so now I’m fully ‘vested’.  This is home.  All my formal ties to elsewhere are dissolved.

I truly am- ‘Shipwrecked on the Isle of Paradise’ and loving it!

Puerto Rican Infrastructure issues revisited-

The Not So Good-  Living here is not without it’s issues as I’ve reported so many times in the past.  The local politicians and businessmen love big grand ideas and projects, but maintaining what some other politician created, not so much.

Case in point- The Claro brand is also Puerto Rico Telephone Company which is all owned by the same parent company which IS our DSL provider.  PRTC is the oldest and largest phone service on the island.  It was a public corporation of the government of PR for many years.  A majority stake was acquired by GTE in the mid 1990’s (a subsidiary of Verizon Corp.) until it was fully acquired by America Movil of Mexico in 2007.  Though recently rebranded as Claro for the wireless segment, it is still owned outright by America Movil, Claro is their International Brand.

Before the DSL, we had a Hughes Dish.  We still have the dish set up, but the service is turned off.  It would drop during heavy rain, cost twice as much and had daily bandwidth limits so we thought we would give the local DSL a try.

To be blunt, our DSL service sux bad.

We switched over to DSL 3 years ago.  We have had so many drops and disconnects in service, I cannot count them all.  We have the service department on ‘speed-dial’.  In that 3 years, we have had many promises to come out to our place, but no one has ever showed up.  We live just outside town near the end of hardwire service.  The shot of the busted telephone pole is not far from the house and has been that way for several months now.  The other shot of the pole is right off our driveway.  It sat like that for several weeks, but it has since been cleaned up… some.

We have spent so many hours on the phone with tech support trying to trouble shoot our issues to the point that we know their drill by heart.

Our current outage started as intermittent service last week, but went dead on Saturday.  We have had no service since and as we understand it, it may be out for days or even weeks.  Oh yea, the local Claro Website makes no mention of these issues either.

That don’t cut it.

Since we rely on the Internet for some of our income, we had to come up with another solution.  We needed a temporary fix.  After visiting the closest AT&T office and a Claro kiosk, we went to Radio Shack.  They had a mobile wireless hub we could score with a ‘pay-as-you-go’ plan.  These had become very popular in the last couple of days.  I wonder why?

What we got was a VirginMobile Overdrive Pro Mobile Hotspot that would support up to 5 devices.  It cost $140.  The 5 Gigs for 30 days set us back $55.  This will cover our critical stuff, but no streaming of videos or uploading videos I produce, at least for now.

This means no PBS Newshour until we get the DSL back.
That really pisses me off!

I have to say, the little wireless hub pulls a strong signal and delivers 3G to our area.  If we were closer to town, I’m sure we would get 4G.

Because of how flaky the DSL has been, we are seriously thinking about firing up the Hughes dish again, but it costs $80 a month and has volume limits.

Our patience is coming to an end.

It is true, most Puerto Ricans access the Web via a smartphone or tablet.  Hardline service has always been an issue in Puerto Rico.  But for those of us who work from the web, we need a stable solution.

Is anyone listening?

No, I’m not going to sit in the Plaza with my MacBook so I can get free WiFi.  That’s just lame.

There are other infrastructure issues, but I’ll save them for another day.  Besides, it’s nice outside and I need to go water my garden… In December!

We still have avocados in the tree.