Then it was out of the airport and onto the roads. So, like, one hour I was driving in St. Maarten, and the next in Puerto Rico -- talk about a time warp! St. Maarten has small, curvy, hilly, one lane roads; friendly drivers; and you can bend the rules some and it all works out. In Puerto Rice the roads are three or fours lanes in each direction, the drivers are fast, horns blare, and no one has any patience. I felt like my mind was bent at a 90 degree angle.
And when I get out on the roads and drive...
...I wish I was back in St. Maarten.
The license plates on the cars here say Isla del Encanto. But it's really the Isla del Traffic, Traffic Jams, Aggressive Drivers, and Bad Road Signs. I realize that I've just come from St. Maarten, a place where if you drive long enough you start to believe that there really is a Brotherhood of Man, but driving here is even worse than driving back in Florida. There are so many cars, so many drivers, such big roads, such huge traffic jams -- basically the same as any big Stateside city. The aggravating factors here are dos: Numero uno, the drivers are very aggressive. Lane changing is accomplished by darting over and counting on whoever you dart in front of to let you in. The really bad thing is I had to drive the same way just to get around. It's hair raising. Especially since I'm still jittery because of the accident in St. Maarten. I was constantly worried about a fender-bender -- I don't know why we didn't see any. At one point I was trying to dart into the lane to the left at the same moment as someone in the lane one over decided to dart into the same lane from the right at the same spot at just the same moment.
Y numero dos: They are really lacking in directional signs here. I mean, you'd think, Old San Jaun is like the biggest tourist attraction around, so you'd think there'd be signs: "Old San Juan ->"; "Old San Juan, Left Lane"; "This way to Old San Juan." You'd think. Well, there aren't. So how does the responsible tourist compensate? By buying a map. But what good does that do, when many if not most of the surface streets are not named by street signs? Kinda makes maps useless.
We found Old San Juan by blind luck. I was stuck in a lane that veered off to the left when I didn't think I should have veered off to the left but I couldn't get out of the lane so I veered off to the left whether I wanted to or not and...
...veering off to the left was the way to old San Juan.
Phew!
Driving here is so not fun.
Some other examples of driving madness: Motorcycles commonly race between lanes of cars on the highways, sometimes even when the cars are moving. You see this all the time. It's really scary. And, despite frequent signs forbidding it, people speed down the breakdown lanes.
Sometimes you get a pleasant surprise while stuck in traffic: Without warning a flock of colorful bicyclists will fly by with flashes of iridescent blues, lime greens, sunflower yellows, whites, and reds. In less than a second they are gone. But if you wait patiently (and what else is there to do while stuck in traffic?) you will be treated to a straggler or two.
Another day amongst the horrible traffic and more horrible drivers. And another page was added to the annals of stupid driving: I was zooming along highway 55, which is like our interstate highways, in the right hand lane at quite a clip, when another driver zoomed up behind me and then swerved to the right into the merging lane of an onramp and passed me in the merging lane!
Last Monday, in Old San Juan, I thought it was quaint and odd that the streets there were so narrow. During the last two days, driving around the island, I've discovered that it has nothing to do with Old San Juan. The city streets in what seems like every city in Puerto Rico -- Aguadilla, Isabela, Salinas -- are tiny, tiny, tiny, with cars parked along both sides just to make things even more interesting, and these are usually two-way streets.
The strange contrast of driving is that this island is really a collection of towns of small cramped streets that require patience and cooperation to negotiate connected by wide fast highways where people drive like selfish maniacs. And where these two worlds -- the narrow streets and the superhighways -- intersect there are seldom traffic controls, and jumping out in front of someone else or even a couple of someones else and risking an accident is the only way to get around.
Here's an example of what can happen on the small cramped streets. This is from The San Juan Star during our stay:
A young man died in a freak car accident Thursday morning in the Bucarabones sector of Toa Alta, police reported.
According to police, 19-year-old Xavier Cruz Callazo was driving down a narrow stretch of Route 819 when the driver's side mirror struck the passenger side mirror of an oncoming car.
A piece of flying glass flew through the open driver's side window of Cruz Callazo's car, slicing the jugular vein in his neck and killing him instantly.
The driver of the other car was identified as **** **** *****, 35, of Toa Alta.
I mentioned earlier that I'm surprised we haven't seen more fender benders. Today we passed two major accidents.
Puerto Rico is a wonderful place, and this is a terrific resort, but I don't think I could ever come back here. I just can't stand driving in the traffic. Not just around San Juan, but everywhere. At least, everywhere we've been.
And here's today's traffic report:
If you have to visit San Juan, Sunday is the day to do it. The drivers are still crazy, but the jams are much reduced. And speaking of crazy drivers, I have four more examples to add to my litany of insanity:
Slow drivers in left lanes -- I know we see this in the States, but it's epidemic here. As a result, fast drivers weave back and forth in the right lanes, cutting narrowly in and out, and it's not uncommon to see the rightmost lane moving fastest. It's a jungle out there.
When traffic is backed up at toll booths, and people have chosen their lanes, and are waiting to pay, it's not uncommon for someone to decide to change lanes, and suddenly dart over and in front of some soul waiting in the next lane, forcing himself into that lane. Whenever I'm waiting at a toll booth, I see this at least two or three times -- it's more usual than not. I have never seen this happen in the States. You pick a lane, you live with your choice, just like in a supermarket.
Illegal use of lanes: If I am at a straight through lane, sitting at a light, someone will pull into the adjacent turn-only lane, and, when the light changes, gun his engine and cut me off to go straight instead. Or if I'm in the turn-only lane, someone will pull into the straight-through lane and do the same thing: Use my light to gun ahead and cut me off. This isn't an isolated thing. It's happened to me at least once every time I'm out driving. This is crazy. Can't you wait in line with the rest of us? But no, an empty lane going in the direction you don't want to be going in is just an invitation to steal ahead of everyone else in line.
If you're sitting in a line of traffic at a traffic light here, and it turns green, inevitably someone will instantly toot their horn, usually twice: Beep beep! I mean, so instantly that you have to wonder where these people honed their reflexes. Why aren't they competing in some Olympic sport? And to what end are these toots directed? We can see the light is green. We are going to go. I've been driving for more then thirty years and have sat at zillions of traffic lights and believe you me the traffic does not start away any faster here than anywhere else where they do not toot on green lights, but for some reason someone will always toot the instant it turns green here.
I know you're saying, "I've had this happen to me at a light in the States." Yes, you have. So have I. Do you know how uncommon it is? It's so uncommon that when it happens to me, I stop dead in the middle of the intersection, hold up all the traffic, and give the people behind me the finger so the jerk who tooted his horn knows what an asshole he is, and then I hold everyone up for a good long time so he has time to think about what a jerk he is.
If I did that here, I'd never get anywhere. I'd spend my life sitting in the middle of intersections.
The only way to drive here is to tune out horn toots entirely. They belong to some other plane of existence, where drivers are maniacs and deserve to be killed in head-on collisions. Of course in this plane of existence no one deserves to be killed for anything, especially not a simple transgression of traffic etiquette, and we live in this plane, so we must be at peace with at ourselves, but we secretly hope those drivers will be killed in their own plane and not create traffic tie-ups in this one.
Text and images © Copyright Gregory Smith or Judith Fulks 2004