Pics from the Car

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Driving around Puerto Rico is an interesting experience. As I mentioned before, the vast majority of the drivers take the maximum speed thing seriously and drive well under the speed limit. Other rules of the road, however, do not garner quite as much loyalty. For instance, stop signs are often optional for many drivers. This is especially true on the narrow, one-way streets of downtown Isabela. Right-of-way tends to be meaningless, as well. And people think nothing of just stopping in the street and blocking traffic.

I am also baffled by the emergency vehicles. All of them - police, fire, ambulance - drive with their lights on. I'm not talking their headlights here. I'm talking the flashing lights. I saw a cop sitting in traffic with her lights flashing and was gobsmacked that no one made room for her to pass. That was because she wasn't on a call. Emergency vehicles put on their sirens for that. The problem is, you see the lights long before you hear the siren (you know, science), so it seems to me that having the lights on all the time makes it harder for the emergency vehicles to make progress when they genuinely need to do so. You aren't going to pay attention to the flashing lights and by the time you hear the siren, the vehicle is almost on top of you. I do not understand the logic of this practice.

Here are a few photos I took during our various drives around the island. They were scenes that caught my eye for one reason or another.

 California has its Hollywood sign. Puerto Rico has its Sprint.




 This is a mosaic, not a painting. 

 When I return to Puerto Rico later this week, I plan to go back to this area for better photos. But in this one town, horses are treated like dogs. Some are tied to apartment patios. Others are left to roam around the buildings and roads. Like this horse foraging next to the highway.

Remember the tsunami sign from Old San Juan? It showed that El Morro was a safe place to wait out a tsunami. In Isabela, you're apparently out of luck. It's a danger zone and as the drawing depicts, you're going to get hit by the wave. 

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