This past weekend I learned how to play dominoes with my girlfriend and the landlords. The landlords don’t know English all that well so it was pretty fun trying to decipher what they said and plan my next newbie move. Dominoes is a very common game that you will see people playing on the weekends having beer until 4 in the morning while sitting in there carport. We however had homemade Pina Coladas made out of real coconut cream, pineapple juice, and Don Q Rum (the favorite rum of the locals).

If you have never played, its an interesting and fun game. It reminds me a lot of card games such as Spades or Hearts. There is a lot of strategy involved, because you want your partner to do well and keep the other team from throwing down there dominoes. When one person gets rid of their dominoes that team wins.

Dominoes is a serious game here in Puerto Rico, the people we played with even have a custom table built with a Puerto Rican theme. The table looks like a standard card table with wood built on top with a picture in the middle of El Morro and sayings around the sides of the table such as “Boricua (Puerto Rican Taino Indians)” and “La Bandera (the flag)”. No one could find a piece of paper to write on, so a file folder was improvised as the score card. I still don’t think that I understand the whole scoring system, but I am sure it won’t take to long. Hopefully not, because we won the tournament.

There are a few ways to get someone attention in Puerto Rico. The most commonly heard way to get someone’s is the word “mira”… When the word is used it is often used once then in pairs “mira… … mira, mira”. Mira means look. Don’t forget to roll your R. For a gringo, it is pronounced more like “myda”.

Do you remember the sound you learn to describe the sound of a snake when you are a kid? Yup, that hissing sound is another way to get the attention of someone. I mainly hear the hissing in loud environments such as a restaurant or bar. I assume the high pitch of the hiss travels over most noises as it works fairly well. You will almost always get a bar tenders attention using this method. Careful though, this method is considered a little rude. So you should only do it if all else fails.

I also often see males hiss at Puerto Rican girls as a way to “pick them up”. The girls will usually ignore the guy. A few girls have told me they think it’s rude. I assume it is like a stereotypical blue collar worker whistling or “cat call” at a girl in the States.

If you are a smoker in Puerto Rico there are not many brands of cigarettes that you can buy (I stopped smoking in September). Pretty much your only choices are Marlboro for regular cigs or Kool if you smoke menthols. I did find a few places that you could buy Camel Turkish Gold (which was my brand of choice in the States). I also noticed that since there was no competition, there were never any specials like “Buy one pack get one free”. So if you are vacationing to Puerto Rico, make sure you bring your brand of choice.

Liquor stores in PR will also sell cigarettes individually. I have seen individual cigs for sell from any where from $0.25-0.50 which is marketed for the homeless purchase. I have also been told that it was possible to buy pack that had only 10 cigarettes until a few years ago.

Recently Puerto Rico followed suit with what most major cities are doing and banning smoking in restaurants and bars. Most establishments are very confused about the law. If a restaurant has a patio, some will let you smoke outside and some will not stating it’s against the law. Before I stopped smoking I was in a walkway smoking close to fast food place and someone came outside of the restaurant saying I couldn’t be that close to a building while smoking.

I am probably a little late in posting this for all of the Spring Breakers, but I recently receive in an email asking me what the legal drinking age is.

The legal drinking age in Puerto Rico is 18.  I don’t think the age is enforced though.  I am not saying it never happens, but I have never even seen anyone be carded here.  I am pretty sure I have seen kids under 18 drinking with no one even batting an eye.

This question will become more important as college kids try to leave the country for Spring Break.  Puerto Rico now becomes a prime spot for travel and vacations because PR does not require a passport.

If you’re vacationing and heading to the beach, make sure you bring a portable cooler (they now sell those coolers that can fold up) and pack it up with what ever beer you can find because I rarely see people selling beer at the beach.  Most people traveling usually like to try the local beer called Medalla which is pretty good.  Medalla is the only beer we don’t have to import from any country, so it is cheap!

Did you know that you do not need prescriptions for the majority of medicines in Puerto Rico? I believe the only drugs that you have to have a prescription for is ‘scheduled drugs‘. It took me almost a year of living in PR to discover this.

Late one Friday, I had thrown my neck out and couldn’t move it to one side. Saturday I had a scuba dive scheduled and had already paid for a boat trip to St. Thomas. I told my girlfriend that we were going to have to cancel. She said “I’ll get you something for it.” I told her “It’s not like we can just go get some aspirin to fix it.” She explained not to worry. We then drove up to a mom and pop pharmacy that was next to a doctors office. We then walked up and talked to the pharmacist and my girlfriend spouts something off in Spanish. She then repeated back a list of high end muscle relaxers. I told her one that I had been prescribed before and a few minutes later I had enough to last me the weekend. As I waited in the checkout line I noticed a price list of a few painkillers, muscle relaxers, and anti anxiety medications posted on the wall.

Later she explained that your big commercial pharmacies such as Walgreens or El Amal (the local big pharmacy) won’t sell them to you because they are in some sort of network and they can’t. I sort of think it is just store policy though…?

The problem with buying medication like this is insurance won’t cover them. You have to have a prescription from the doctor to be covered, so it could get pretty costly. I also don’t know if they would allow you to load up on the medicine either. They might just allow you to get a few days worth. Then again, you could just keep going to different pharmacies to abuse meds if you wanted.

If you’re not abusing the system, it actually makes sense to allow you to buy medications. Most people know what is wrong with them and they know their bodies. I knew for a fact what was wrong with my neck. It happens frequently to me and I have to go to the doctor to waste my money and my time to have him tell me to take some muscle relaxers and put a heating pad on my neck. This way I saved time and money. The amount of pills that it took to fix my problem cost less than the copay for the doc and medication.

With my girlfriend cooking all of the time, I noticed that Puerto Rico mainly just sells brown eggs at the grocery stores.  In the States (or where I am from), I mostly just see white eggs.  Does it matter?  I got curious to see if there was a difference.  A quick search on Google took me to a Yahoo page explaining that the difference in egg color is determined on the hens color.  If the hen is white she will lay white eggs.  If she is red then she lays brown eggs.  As far as taste and nutritional value, no difference.

I then thought this difference probably doesn’t deserve an article on this site.   And it might not, but I started this site to show the differences.  So here ya go.  Brown eggs are better in PR!