So you would think getting your mail service set up would be a relatively simple task. If you are us, in Puerto Rico, you would be wrong. This has been an ongoing “game” since we arrived.  When we first arrived, we were using simply “General Delivery” to the Rincón post office. We sent our bicycles and a box of tools this way.

Shipping our bicycles in boxes from Colorado

This worked great and all of our mail arrived. We continued doing this (and are continuing to do this) but the post office workers said we couldn’t use general delivery for long and that we had better set up a more permanent solution. They recommended getting a P.O. Box as it is the most secure, or if not, we would have to get a locking mail box on our “rural route”. We thought about it and got some advice. Some friends had also advised us to get a PO box.  The only issue we saw with the PO box was that it has an associated and ongoing cost with it.  The yearly fee is ~$80/year.  That seems steep for something we normally received without an additional fee.

So we checked out what everyone else in our neighborhood was using and decided that we would use that: a cluster box. We were familiar with that as that is how we received mail at our house in Greeley.

The clusterbox of our neighborhood

The post office workers said we would need to take a picture of the box in order for them to know which one it was, so we did! They checked and said that it was full and so we would have to install our own mailbox next to this clusterbox! Ok, that seemed kind of weird because wouldn’t you just want to make a bigger box instead of having a bunch of different mailboxes next to the clusterbox? But alright, we can do that.

We have spent many a morning in this Post Office of Rincón

We inquired about using our own mailbox and after a few trips back and forth to the post office in Rincón (“come back mañana”) we got some instructions to setup a mailbox. After that they then would assign us a number for it.  “Great!” we thought and a day or so later we set off to Home Depot to try and find a mailbox (what we learned are called a “buzon” in Spanish).

The only mailboxes that Home Depot had were a sort of generic box and the post.  All in all the cost was actually kind of high (around $100), which is more than the PO box is for one year of service, but we bit the bullet and bought a mailbox…only to find out that it didn’t lock! We looked at how the other boxes around worked and found that they cut a slit in the front and then put a padlock on them, but the ones from Home Depot (and later we looked at Walmart and just about every Ferretaria we could find) are made so that no padlock can be attached.

We decided we would go with the upright boxes that do have locks and so we took back the unlockable one and bought a new one. I installed it to a post, dug a hole, put in concrete and thought I was ready to receive my number to put on the box.

Digging the hole for our new box

Installed!

We turned in all the paperwork and waited for the rural route clerk to give us our number and start delivering the mail. When we returned to the post office they said that they could not deliver to that type of mailbox: that it had to be the tube style one. We explained that we could not find any that had any locks on it and asked if we could buy one from them. Little did we know: the mail service does not sell mail boxes!

After multiple excursions to Mayaguez looking for mailboxes and having no luck finding any tube locking ones, we were ready to just get a P.O. Box.

So I went down to the Rincón Post Office and picked up my mail (General Delivery from my mom in Colorado) and said I was ready to buy a P.O. Box. The clerk said the person who normally does that has not been coming in to work and that I would have to wait. OK, well at least they can’t say I haven’t tried to get my mail set up, because in all honesty, I don’t really mind just picking it up as General Delivery!

So I was talking with our new friend who is the postmaster in Cabo Rojo and said that we were ready to just get a PO Box and be done with it. From Cabo Rojo he called Rincón and set us up with a PO box!

We thought we were all set and today we went in to get the key and they said that that box belonged to someone else! So we asked if we could transfer it to another number and they said they couldn’t do that…

So again we wait. And get our general delivery mail. We haven’t missed any mail, even the ones that have started going to what we thought was our new PO Box. Everyone at the post office has been very nice and helpful saying that they would personally look for anything that was ours. We have heard that part of the problem is that the Rincón postmaster recently died and that everything has been out of sorts there, so we have tried to give them some slack.

We don’t get that much mail and it really isn’t that big of a deal anyway because it always eventually reaches us. It has just been an ongoing game that we seem to play once or twice a week: the mail game. We are just as curious how this game will turn out as anyone.