Warning – Utilities in Puerto Rico are expensive! Every year Puerto Rico produces 20.92 billion kWh of electricity and we use it all! It’s crazy, power bills are way more expensive than the bills we got in California before we moved here and the average income in Puerto Rico is $16,300 a year with a 12% unemployment rate. How do people pay their electricity bills?

I say all this even though we are still in California, because I miss home. One of the things I think about are the beautiful Trade Winds consistently blowing through the house. Without fail, almost every day, those Trade Winds start blowing through Rincon around 10am and don’t settle down until 3 or 4 o’clock. When we were in Palm Springs a couple weekends ago, I took a few pictures of the mesmerizing windmill farms. They are everywhere.

Renewable Energy in Palm Springs

So, it makes me wonder. It would be great to subsidize our power bills with wind or solar power. I need to think money though, does Puerto Rico recognize renewable power additions to your home in tax breaks or credits? Is it considered when your house is being appraised for a refinance or sale? How many solar panels do you actually need to power a 4,000 square foot house? How much do battery back ups cost and do you need a lot of space to store the fuel cells?

Man, we really miss being home. We have some friends (Tony and Meghan) staying at our house watching Monkey, Cheech and the chickens but we’ve been gone for 5 weeks now and I am loosing it!

We are in San Diego again visiting Summers family, working and enjoying everything this extremely spread out city has to offer. Unlike Rincon, it takes 30 minutes to get anywhere here…without traffic.

Rincon Wireless Network

The drive from San Diego to Palm Springs is direct and on main highways the entire time aside from one really cool mountain pass. Outside of San Diego county, my phone buzzed indicating to me that there was a wireless network available, and the network was called RINCON! It made me think about our little finca in Rincon and miss it even more. It’s funny, we totally take it for granted while we are there. Our life in Puerto Rico is ‘as good as it gets’ and I’m stoked to hear the clapping upon the plane landing, smelling the humidity and hearing the Coquís when we land.

When we moved to Puerto Rico, I was super stoked to hear that there are “no sharks” here. After hearing that, I did a little bit of research and there are actually sharks in Puerto Rico, but there had never been a shark attack on record and you do not see them in the water when you are surfing. (My theory is that the reef formations in Puerto Rico keep the sharks farther out to sea.) WELL, a tourist recently got attacked by a shark while swimming in the bioluminescent bay at Vieques!

The Washington Post reports:

“A shark estimated at 6 feet (1.8 meters) long bit a U.S. tourist earlier this week while she swam in a popular bioluminescent bay at night, doctors said Thursday.

Her mother said Strunk was doing much better, seeming to improve by the hour. She declined to go into details about the incident.

Stefan, my mom and I recently did the bioluminescent bay tour (the one in Parquera)…Yikes! It was creepy enough swimming around in that murky bay at night. Now that I know there may very well be sharks there, I won’t be doing that again!

In order to have a legitimate rant about the collecteria, everyone needs to know what the collecteria is in Puerto Rico.

Collecteria: The collecteria is a government office that collects money from businesses and individuals. An example of an individuals’ payment is state income ta, property tax or to cash in lottery tickets. An example of a payment a business would have to make is the 7% sales tax or the tax withheld from employee payroll.

Departmento de Hacienda

Just a little more set up before I rant.
At one time, there was a collecteria located in downtown Rincon. As a Rincon based business, I was required to collecteria and make payments every month. There was always a long line, but it was right around the corner from our house so no big deal.

begin rant
They closed down the collecteria in Rincon about 6 months ago. I’m not sure why, since there was always a line there, but they shut the doors and the landord of the building put a sign indicating it was for rent. Se Aquilla (sp?). The sign on the glass read that it was closed and the next closest location was in Aguada.

I was bummed, because Aguada is 10 minutes away with no traffic and 45 minutes with traffic. Beat. Well, I was over it and started to enjoy going to Aguada once a month and used it as an excuse to stop at a Deli we discovered that actually sells lunch meats by the pound! Not that I like driving, but it was nice to get out of Rincon regularly.

Today I went to the collecteria in Aguada and they changed their hours of operation. They used to take my money from 9:00am to 3:00pm, but today they had a hand made sign written in highlighter that stated their new hours. They are now open from 9:00am to 12:00pm and then again from 1:00pm to 3:00pm.

Well, this new schedule isn’t that bad as long as you plan for it. Today, Sydney and I showed up at the collecteria at 11:45 and the guard came over and told me they were closed until 1:00pm. I asked the guard what time it was and he told me it was 11:45 and gave me a look like, I know we are closing 15 minutes early, but I’m not in charge, they are. He then pointed to the side walk and said;

Please wait here until 1:00pm.

I explained to him that it wasn’t 12:00pm yet and that I had all my paperwork/checks in order and that I would only take 2 minutes. He looked in to the counter where they were helping the last person in there and told me no.

Sydney the Superstar

Maybe it doesn’t sound like a big deal, but I thought it was ridiculous. Close early? I understand cutting down on hours to save money but this was just ridiculous. They weren’t closing down because of government cuts (closed office and 9-3 office hours), they were closing early because they were hungry and/or lazy.

The round trip with Sydney took us about an hour and twenty minutes. Do they think I can just leave the office for 3 or 4 hours to make a lousy payment every month!? When I was walking away the manager was giving me stink eye and I had no recourse. He’s the boss, gotta come back when he says so. If I were from Jersey, I would have flipped him off.

At first I was livid, but then Sydney and I went into a locally owned store down the street hand-in-hand to get a bottle of water. The store was small, only had beer, rum, smokes and bottled water. The owner was talkative, nice and was sweet on our little superstar girl. I let Sydney drink out of a big girl water bottle, she pointed out the balloons at the bridal store, claimed the motorcycle when it roared by and pointed out animal shapes in the clouds as we walked back to the truck. I was back in a great mood (thanks Syd).

However, just because I was in an instant good mood, it doesn’t mean that I’m not going to have a little rant on the blog. Man I was pissed. Have you had any good/bad experiences with Departmento de Hacienda Collecteria? Do share!

Within the last few months we have noticed that some of our thriving palms tree have suddenly died for no apparent reason. We initially blamed it on the ants, since we found a large ant pile around the base of one of the palms that died, but then we kept losing palm after palm and started to notice holes dug near the base of a lot of our palm trees. I initially figured they were dug by lizards or maybe even tarantulas so I just left them alone, but we have finally found the culprit of the palm tree murders and they are the ones making those holes!

Root Borer Beetles!

This is what is left of the beetle that Stefan pulled out of the hole:

And here is a picture of a live Root Borer Beetle:

And here is how those little bastards get into the tree’s roots for a feast that will end up killing the tree:

I read up on Root Borer Beetles on the internet and they said that there is not a whole lot you can do about it, because once you start to notice that the tree is dieing, the damage has already been done and the tree will most likely die. Stefan tried to flood them out of their holes by sticking the hose down there and filling the hole with water then backfilling them with dirt, but the next day, the holes reappeared. Obviously the Root Borers thought that Stefan’s water treatment was refreshing, so I decided to get down and dirty! I sprayed inside the hole with roach killer and then filled it in with dirt. It seems to have worked because that hole did not get re-dug.

So if you are noticing palm trees around your property suddenly dieing, check around the base. If you see some large holes, about 1 – 2 inches in diameter, you’ve got root borer beetles eating your palms roots. So far, they have only been eating the palms, but we’ve lost at least 6 already.

I feel the need to share this great song by a local band here in Rincon. Check it out and let me know what you think about the Durty Rats.
Applesauce 002 remix cb 32bit to 16 by Durty Rats

I’ve said it before, but I’m not sure if I said it here. The summer time in Puerto Rico to me is all about work, fresh fruit/vegetables and planting. This weekend was a great weekend. I got tons of yard work done, Summer and I planted a bunch of new plants and we got dumped on by a nice little tropical afternoon thunderstorm.

Rooster on the Front Porch

Our crazy rooster, that attacks Summer all the time, is quite brave. This afternoon, he (and his hens) were cruising around the front yard and decided to take a closer look at how humans live in Rincon. He cruised right up to the porch like it was nobody’s business and claimed the house as his own. Summer, Sydney and I are moving to the chicken coop next week.

Cheech the Cat Likes the Baby Chickens

Cheech absolutely loves the new chickens. He doesn’t want to eat them at all. He is just inspecting them to make sure none of them are sick or need medical attention. Cheechers says meow!!!

Yes, that’s right, Summer and I have jobs. It seems that many people think that because we moved to Rincon from California we got here with tons of coin and that we don’t need jobs because we are independently wealthy. Haha, this is not the case.

We both work full time from our offices located here at the house. We love working from home and love being able to spend so much time with Sydney. We’re super strict about schedules and parent duties timing. We alternate 6am-12 and 12-6pm Monday through Friday. This allows me to be in the office for 6 hours during the day, and then I work after Sydney goes to bed for a few hours every night. Summer and I often work weekends as well, as we both need at least 40 hours a week to work.

Yesterday, it was my morning shift in the office. I went upstairs to make a cup of coffee around 10:00am to take a break and say hello to Sydney and Summer. When I got up there, they weren’t home so I enjoyed my delicious coffee on the front porch alone with my thoughts. I put down my coffee and for some reason, thought what I was seeing was a great example of my lifestyle and two things that make me happy. Coffee and flip-flops. Not that it is art, but if you look at this picture subjectively I think you could read into it and get a lot more out of it than meets the eye. Hope your day today is as good as mine was yesterday!

Coffee Flip-Flops

Sydney and I were swimming at the Marina with friends the other day, when the weather started changing…It went from nice and sunny to dark and windy within a matter of minutes. While this is a pretty common occurrence in Puerto Rico in the summertime, this storm looked a bit more ominous then the typical 3pm downpour we’ve been having daily. As we packed up our things, we noticed a waterspout had formed!

I even got a short video of the waterspout:

This was the first time that I’ve seen a waterspout in person and it was pretty close. It was really cool to see the water getting sucked up from the ocean and the waves up the waterspout were so rhythmic, it looked like an optical illusion.

A waterspout is a tornado over water and is formed when cold air and warm air start swirling around thanks to a fast-moving thunderstorm. The waterspout we saw lasted for about 15 minutes and seemed to be increasing in strength, until it suddenly dissipated.

In other news…Looks like a tropical storm (Emily) is heading our way and will likely hit Puerto Rico this weekend. Will it be our first hurricane?!

Our hibiscus are getting so big, it’s time to start using hedge clippers!!