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09/06/09 |
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20 years in Puerto Ricoby Julio Rosario Sanchez The phone call that changed my life.The best way to tell a wonderful story is to start at the beginning. It all started with a phone call from my best friend Hector Rodriguez. I was working at my pc in an apartment on Palisade Avenue in Weehawken, New Jersey. The phone rings...I pick it up and what do I hear. Wakko! that's the way Hector and I say hello on the phone. It's also the way we greet each other on email or chat programs like Yahoo instant messenger. Hector says to me, he says, Hey wakko how would you like to go to Puerto Rico for a few days. Now I happen to know that he owns a house there so its not a surprise but more like, "I thought you never ask". It was just a couple of days after Christmas 2003 and we would be in Puerto Rico January 2 to 5. Funny thing is that my mom was leaving Puerto Rico as we were landing. To make a long story short it was a blast. We went dancing at the Babylon Club in Isla Verde. The club is in the El San Juan Hotel. We only spent 3 days in Puerto Rico but the island had such a profound affect on me that when it came time to go home I turned to Hector and said, "I'm staying". Hector played along but I knew that he knew that I meant it. We made a deal that I would move to Puerto Rico at the end of April and I wouldn't have to pay rent for 3 months. So back in the good'ol U.S.A I begin my plans to move to Puerto Rico. First I let all my client know that I was going to move and that I would provide technical support via the internet and telephone. I interviewed several technicians to handle on-site repairs. However they turned out to be a bunch of jerks and didn't live up to their promises. I had to enlist the help of my best friend Hector to help me with my clients in New York City. Okay so here we are April 30, 2004 at the airport in San Juan waiting for Hector to rent a car so we could drive to Aguas Buenas where Hector's house is located. Leslie's (Hector's wife) brother Manny was with us. We drove to the house and arrived about 10:45pm just in time to get a few beers at the the local bars. I can't describe the emotions I was feeling. Just knowing and thinking about how my life was changing. That I was finally going to live in Puerto Rico. A dream that I have kept secretly to myself. I have always thought of living in Puerto Rico. My dream was to retire to Puerto Rico when I reached 65 years of age and sell ice cream on the beach. But after spending 3 days here at Hector's house I knew I couldn't wait. I tried to sell my business to some of the computer vendors I did business with in New York City, but no one took me seriously. So I came up with the idea that I would keep my business and provide support over internet using a program called, "pcAnywhere". I would also provide technical support over the phone. I then reduced my monthly retainer fee by 50% in the hopes that not one of my client would close their account. However after I was in Puerto Rico two out of nine of my clients jumped ship.
Aguas Buenas
I arrived on April 30, 2004 between 9-10pm EST at airport in San Juan.
Okay here we are in the mountains of Aguas Buenas somewhere in the
middle of the island. Hector's house is basically at the top of a
mountain and from the back of the house you can see the valley below. I
sent this photo to Alex Duran of ETF Services in NYC. Alex is one of my
clients and he said that I was living in paradise. Hector's house
is a modest home that I found quite comfortable. His apartment is on the
lower level and the apartment at the street level belongs to his
mother-in-law. There were 3 bedrooms to choose from and I took the
middle room because is was the largest. I also
liked the fact that it had 2 windows, One facing east and the other
north. The windows didn't have curtains and I remember my first night in
that room. I felt like on was on a National Geographic expedition. I
mean every bug that could make noise was out there in that wilderness
singing its song. The tree frogs where out in great numbers calling for
a mate. I was at peace because I realized that I had made it and I
was sending my first night
in Puerto Rico as a resident. I then taught about how I felt when
Hector and Manny drove off for the airport. It was May 2, 2004 a
Tuesday afternoon. I watched them drive away and when his rental car turned
the corner I started down the stairs to my new home in Puerto Rico.
I had setup my computer the first night we arrived and we all drank beer
and smoked and talked. We watched a movie on my computer had some
Click here to see all pictures of Aguas Buenas Well lets see its now Monday May, 3 2004 and my first official day operating as a computer consultant in Puerto Rico. I'm online using AOL dialup and the telephone is plugged in. I wrote all my clients an email letting them know that I was online and ready to assist. The refrigerator is full of food and so are the cabinets. I make coffee and had eggs, bacon and toast. Now it turned out that the AOL connection was the worst. I kept losing the connection and it was very slow. I called the Puerto Rico Telephone Company and ordered DSL. It would take them 45 days to install it. DSL is new here so their backed up a bit. Thank God Hector left me his IBM laptop with a Sprint PCS card. I was able to use that to help my client and read my email. But I had to work from outside must of the time. The signal barely reached Hectors house in the mountains. This was a good thing cause I was able to setup shop upstairs on the patio. It was great for a while but then the mosquitoes started to attack and the huge trucks that roll by the house in the daytime made it a little hard to work peacefully. So after a few days of that I figured that I could work from the back porch of Hectors apartment. It was quieter and the bugs didn't bother me as much. Most days I worked all morning making contact with my clients to assure them that I'm available. Most of them taught that I'd send my days at the beach with my laptop drinking Piña Coladas. Aguas Buenas is about one hours drive from any beach. But I did have a local bar called Zambos near by. In fact it was only a one minute walk from the house. I would go there most days and have a few beers. The local beer is called Medalla Light and I just love it. Served very cold it goes well with everything. Some days I'd buy a six pack and take them home. I don't like hanging in bars to much. But as the days and weeks go by I met almost everybody from my area and I found myself chillin out at Zambos every weekend and some week days too. I spoke with Hector one day and he asked if I found myself drinking earlier in the day because there isn't much to do. Okay I'll agree but it was only for a few days after I arrived. Later I'd start having a few brews after 6pm. Now the adventure starts... I'm going to take the bus into Caguas to see what I can see. The bus to Caguas is the Esperanza Bus Co. and the buses are the yellow school bus type. There is one every hour on the hour right in front of the house. I stood outside one morning and at 8:01 am it was there turning the corner. I waved it down and boarded. The bus to Caguas was only .50 cents. There are some bus stops on the route but the buses here will stop anywhere in the campo. In the metropolitan areas they will only stop at bus stops. In the pueblo of AB there is one stop and a lot of people board the bus . In Caguas I got off at the bus terminal which is nothing like the bus terminal in NYC. But like a bus terminal you can board a bus or van that will take to you to many parts of Caguas. There is one to San Juan Bautista Hospital and one to the Catalinas mall. I learned about these two quickly enough because there is a Big Kmart at the mall and the hospital would become my first client in PR. Old San Juan
We ascended the stairs and I noticed very quickly that this place was one of the seedy hotels you read about in old detective novels. The place was dark, dingy and had an odor of dust and old wood. When we reached the second floor I could see that this old building was very much like the railroad apartments I used to rent in NYC. This floor once had two apartments made up of four bedrooms each that open up to the main hall. One large room that faced the front of the edifice contained a balcony with louver doors. The other four bedrooms did not have windows. There was once a dining room and kitchen toward the back but the dining room has since been converted to two small rooms of about 10x7 square feet much like a jail cell for a single occupant. The first room he showed me was fairly large at about 15x15 square feet with a full size bed, end table, dresser, closets and a lamp. There were no windows and just an old 8th avenue subway fan circulated the air. This room would cost me $25.00 a night or $140.00 per week. I asked him to show me the cheapest room he had as if $25.00 wasn’t cheap enough but from the looks of this place I was sure there would be some whole in the wall room that Mr. Castro would let out for less. He took me down the dark hallway to the last room. Well it was the last room before a larger room that contained a nasty old sink with one old fashion spigot or faucet. The kind you see in old photographs of where your parents or grandparents lived when they were children. There was an old dirty refrigerator that looked like it had seen better days. What I mean by that is it was probably white once. Now some of the letters of the brand name were missing and it was a noisy old beast of a machine. On a small knee high countertop that looked like it was stainless steel was what appeared to be a hot plate. Again this artifact would be seen in old Sears’s catalogs of the 1940’s except that it looked like it had been through WWII. The room he showed me was the 10x7 one with an old ceiling fan that was stuck on the lowest setting. There was a 60 watt bulb in a lamp that I’m sure came from La Salle JHS 17 wood shop with no lampshade on a make shift countertop that was suppose to be a sort of desk or tabletop. This was the only light in the room. There was also a twin size bed that was in good condition although I don’t think I’d let my mom or my friends sleep on it. The room was across from a bathroom and the kitchen was just next door. Mr. Castro told me I could have this room for $15.00 a night or $85.00 per week. Well okay now were getting somewhere. You see I didn’t really care what the room or the place was like because I would only be sleeping there. I would be out mostly all day discovering the wonders of Old San Juan. So I asked Mr. Castro if he would save the room for me if I gave him a deposit. He told me that one nights deposit is all he needed and that if I didn’t need the room he would return my deposit. I thought that was fair so I gave him $15.00 bucks and got a receipt from him. All the while I was thinking about my return to AB and that I would have to stay there another 2 or 3 days before returning to this beautiful city. Mr. Castro was opening the gate to let me out and asked me if I would like to sleep on the roof. I didn’t quite know what he meant so I asked him what it was all about. He took me up to the roof and there was a small semi-indoor patio there. He said it would only cost me $10.00 a night and he would give me a key for the gate and I could hang out during the day on the second floor public balcony. Okay I would spend the night on the roof sleeping on a roll away bed instead of making that 3 hours journey to AB. I soon left my Cousin’s Nydia’s apartment after packing and explaining to her that I was staying in OSJ. She must have asked me 20 different questions about the whole thing. I didn’t really explain that it was a seedy place or that it was Mr. Castro’s place. She and her sister, my other cousin named Tonita lived in OSJ but never really go anywhere. Little did I know that Nydia knew Mr. Castro’s wife before she died of cancer some years ago. And that Nydia also knew Mr. Castro’s children. Vicente is Mr. Castro’s son and he is part owner of the guest house now. About four months into my stay at this guest house Nydia would stop by one day to say hello to them. After my cousin’s little visit Mr. Castro’s and Vicente’s attitude toward me would drastically change. They actually started to treat me like family and not just a guest. The night on the roof was wonderful. I could see the cruise ships and the Banco Popular building with its big clock that to my surprise actually worked. It was a warm and uneventful evening except when a lesbian and an africano street vendor came up to smoke a joint. They said hello and that was that. It didn’t bother me because I could not sleep from the excitement that I would be living in OSJ. In the morning Mr. Castro woke me up at 7am on the dot. I was already awake and got out of bed to take a shower. On my way out I stopped at the office and Mr. Castro’s calls me and says that someone left early and that I could stay in a big room tonight. He let me stay in one of the larger rooms on the third floor for $20.00. The room was nice and big. The ceiling fan worked well and I slept like a baby that night. During the day I was all over OSJ. I went to all the places my mother and I visited while she was here for Christmas. The next day Mr. Castro let me into the small room where I would live for the next 18 months.
Well just before this new epoch in Puerto Rico begins I must go back to AB and pack my things and vacate Hectors house. So simply put I took the bus from OSJ to Rio Piedras then to Caguas and from there to Aguas Buenas. I packed my things called a cab to take me to OSJ but it was late and in the campo after 6pm you are stuck for the night. There was still some chicken in the icebox and I made some dinner, ate, and then went to bed. Early the next morning I called Servino Rodriguez, no relation to my buddy Hector. He drove a cab in AB and he came by in 10 minutes to take me to OSJ. He charged me $60.00 dollars which is very cheap considering how far AB is from OSJ. But we were friends and whenever I needed a ride somewhere I would call him. A year later he committed suicide for reasons unknown. Never in my wildest dreams would I have thought I'd live in OSJ. It's kind of like finding a cheap apartment in New York City's village. Trendy and fashionable, lots of nice restaurants. Oh yeah I had a ball eating and exploring OSJ. First there are all the tourist traps, yeah OSJ got'em all. I was used to paying a buck for a can of Medalla and here a can or bottle is 4 dollars. However that was just the first few days. As I explored the old city which by the way is the oldest medieval city in the USA how'bot that. Okay so if you go down to the end of Calle de la Tanca you find a little bar called, "El Adoquin del Patio" and here you'll find cheaper booze and cigarettes. Its a neighborhood bar so it full of locals drinking and smoking. The Smoking didn't last long because a couple of months later Puerto Rico joined the club of not letting people smoke in restaurants and bars. This bar is in a small alley an you'll probably be asked if you like some drugs. Just say no thanks and you'll be fine. There is a drug element in OSJ but mostly in an area called, "La Perla". If you walk down the hill to the entrance of La Perla at almost anytime of day or night the drug vendors will walk up to you with their little plastic tackle boxes lined with cocaine, marijuana, heroine and pills. I have taken people that were staying at the San Juan Guest House on little walking tours of OSJ and sometimes I'll take them down into La Perla using the entrance on the El Morro side of La Perla. We'd walk though and the residents say, "buenos dias" and they point the way out. Once we reach the exit the drugs vendors get up and show us there wares. People are more shocked then afraid that they can sell out in the open. However when police make their rounds you won't see one drug vendor in sight. Okay now for the museums and restaurants. One of my favorites is El Jibarito on Calle Sol. Walk up Calle de la Tanca to Calle Sol and turn left and you see it. Great Puerto Rican food just like grandma used to make. Their prices are good too. I also like a place on Calle San Francisco called Yeyos. This is a lunchtime place but I think they are open until 5pm. You can get lunch for $5.35 here. Rice & beans with steak or chuletas, don't forget tostones or amarellos. For fancy or gourmet food you have to take a walk on Calle Fortaleza between Calle de la Tanca and La Plaza de Colon. There are at least 20 restaurants here so I'm sure you find something you'll enjoy. My favorite is a little Italian place called, Fatelli. I also like Sigolo XX and Aquaviva. The food is great and not to pricey. But watch out for the drinks, I paid $12.00 for a chocolate martini in one place, I forget which one. On the other end of Calle Fortaleza you find the building where the Piña Colada was born. Here there is a restaureant called, "Barrenchina". The food is excellent and they have a floor show of Flamenco dancers. The Piña Colada's are served in old fashion shake glasses and only cost $7.00 dollars. On calle Recinto Sur you find a place called, "El Tamarindo" and get ready to eat the best Puerto Rico gourment food in OSJ. My mom and I had lunch there one day that cost us $120.00 dollars with tip. It was that good! They make a Puerto Rican version of Tirimisu served in a martini glass that is out of this world. In the Cuartel de Ballajá you'll find the Museum of the Americas. I must have been there 100 times when I lived in OSJ. First the Cuartel de Ballajá was a barracks that housed Spanish soldiers and their families in the late 1800s. I have to stop for me moment here and reflect on how I felt the first time I walked into this place. I felt that I was here before. It seems so familiar and yet I have never been here. I found myself walking around the entire building looking at doors, windows and stairwells as if I'd been here in a past life. I could almost see soldiers walking and talking. I could almost see women washing clothes and cooking in the plaza. One day I went there and sat on a bench on the third floor just outside the entrance to an office. I sat there for maybe an hour just looking for I don't know what. Anyway I got up and left and downstairs to the museum to look around again. I lived in OSJ for about year when they finally opened the National Gallery or El Galleira Nacional. It used to be The Convento de los Dominicos and it is found in the Plaza del Quinto Centenario. Here you will find the best works of art by Puerto Rico artist such as José Campeche. Everyday life in Viejo San Juan is very different from everyday life in Aguas Buenas. Now I'm in the metropolitan area. Here the electricity stays on most of the time. And I don't remember the water going away not even once. We have modern transportation in the form of a elevated train and we have a bus company. The buses go to Isla Verde, Carolina, San Turce, Rio Piedras and Bayamon. Viejo San Juan was a free trolley too. There are two free trolley and the mean difference is one goes to "El Morro". I liked the trolley because when your hot and bored you can go for a ride and cool off. Most days I would spend at the Bibliotheca Carnege where they have at least 20 pc's available to the public. Old San Juan is a small place with a big library and not many people go there. Most times I have some sort of computer but a few days before I moved to OSJ my pc tower died. Now I'm in OSJ without a pc. I remember my ex-girlfriend Mirta used to go to a library in Hoboken, NJ and use the computers there.
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This site was last updated 09/06/09
more beers and basically chilled out. The next day we set out to
the Kmart and I purchased some cooking utensils and other sundries for
the house. I bought sandals, shorts and a fan. After that we went
to a supermarket called the "Econo" which has the lowest prices in town.
But that's if you buy what the locals are buying. Being from New
York City I have a very eclectic pallet. Which means I eat everything.
Not really, but my diet is not the everyday Puerto Rican diet. I
like steamed vegetables and lots of green leafy things. But that didn't
stop me from buying culeta's and frozen tostones, beans and yucca.
Later that day we went for a drive and ended up in Piñones. At
piñones there is a beach with sand and surf but the big attraction here
is the food. There are at least 50 restaurants and kiosks selling
everything fried or on a stick. I tried to buy some oysters but I
didn't want to pay 12 dollars for 6 oysters. I remembered something my
mother told and I asked the guy if that was the tourist price and because I
live here maybe he'd lower the price. He didn't say anything so I walked away and got a pincho de
pollo y tostones. On the way to Piñones we had stopped in Caguas and picked up Frank's
Uncle Frankie. Now Frank Soler is married to Leslie's sister Alice.
Franks Uncle Frankie is an veteran and social activist now retired and
living here in Caguas, Puerto Rico. He and I hit it off well and hang out together while
Hector and Manny caught some rays on the beach.
It’s
January 2, 2006 and my mom is on her way back to Union City, NJ. At this
point I have two options. Option number one is to locate an apartment or
room in OSJ and option number two is return to Aguas Buenas and move to
Caguas or Rio Piedras. I’m very determined to stay in OSJ and I’m really
not sure how I’m going to accomplish it. I don’t have the cash to rent
an apartment nor do I have anyone I could borrow from. However I was
determined to stay. I went to Calle Tanca where I saw a building with a
sign that read, “San Juan Guest House”. The building was located between
Calle Fortaleza and Calle San Francisco. The exact address is Calle
Tanca 205. It is owned by a very old man originally from Spain. His name
is Enrique Castro and if I remember correctly he was 75 years old. I
walked up to the gate and rang the bell. Mr. Castro called to me from
the top of the stairs and I asked if he had any rooms for rent. He came
down to the street level and we began to converse. He told me that he
might have a room for me in a couple of days. I wasn’t very happy to
hear this because it meant I would have to return to Aguas Buenas. I
asked Mr. Castro if he knew of any other guest house in OSJ. He told me
about a couple and said that they cost more. At this point he invited me
to look at a room. I really didn’t want to see any rooms at this point
because I didn’t want to waste time. I thought about leaving but my
curiosity got the better of me.