Popular Questions About GPS In Puerto Rico

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It’s fun­ny.  I launched this site less than a year ago.  Since then I’ve cov­ered close to 100 des­ti­na­tions in Puer­to Rico and pub­lished over a dozen posts about beau­ti­ful places to see.  I’ve shot videos for our YouTube Chan­nel, post­ed on Face­book, LinkedIn and Twit­ter and sent out thou­sands of emails pro­mot­ing our site.  And the ques­tions I receive the most are these:

  • Will our GPS unit work in Puer­to Rico?
  • Does Turn-By-Turn GPS work in Puer­to Rico?
  • Can I rent a GPS unit in Puer­to Rico?
  • Do I need a GPS unit in Puer­to Rico?

And the answers to these four ques­tions are yes, yes, yes, and maybe, it’s up to you.

Let’s take each ques­tion indi­vid­u­al­ly. Will your GPS unit work in Puer­to Rico? All three major GPS man­u­fac­tur­ers work per­fect­ly in Puer­to Rico.  Those are Garmin, Mag­el­lan and Tom­Tom.  Of course, you’ll need to ver­i­fy that your par­tic­u­lar unit has the maps for Puer­to Rico installed.  But oth­er than that you should­n’t have any prob­lem at all.

Now let’s talk about the sec­ond ques­tion.  Does turn-by-turn GPS work in Puer­to Rico?  And the answer is yes.  In fact, it’s your best bet because in many regards Puer­to Rican roads fol­low uncon­ven­tion­al sig­nage stan­dards.  If you would like to learn all about that take a look at the fol­low­ing video.

So why is turn-by-turn GPS so use­ful in Puer­to Rico?  Because it will take you straight to your des­ti­na­tion regard­less of sig­nage stan­dards, or the lack of them alto­geth­er.  Espe­cial­ly when you have the exact coor­di­nates like we pro­vide for every des­ti­na­tion on Puer­to Rico By GPS.  You’ll go straight to the des­ti­na­tion every time.

Now, let’s sup­pose that you don’t own a GPS unit: can you rent a GPS unit and Puer­to Rico?  The answer is also yes!  Most car rental com­pa­nies rent GPS units for around $10 a day.  And, of course, if you’re plan­ning to stay sev­er­al weeks on the Island you’ll prob­a­bly be bet­ter off buy­ing your own.

Fur­ther­more, cer­tain lux­u­ry mod­els bring the GPS unit fac­to­ry installed.  But the dai­ly rental fee for those vehi­cles is a lot steeper.

And that brings us to the fourth ques­tion: Do I need a GPS unit in Puer­to Rico?  And the answer to that ques­tion is both yes and no.  In fact, I wrote an entire post about that sub­ject titled (you guessed it) “Do You Need A Ded­i­cat­ed GPS Unit To Vis­it Puer­to Rico?”

The fact is that Puer­to Rico can some­times be a lit­tle con­fus­ing to get around.  The rea­sons are explained in the video above.  But cel­lu­lar tech­nol­o­gy has advanced so much dur­ing the last five years that you can get around just fine by just using your iPhone or Android phone com­bined with the Google Maps app.

In fact, I’ll let you in on a lit­tle secret.  I’ve lived in Puer­to Rico for 51 years, so I hard­ly need a GPS to get around.  But on those rare occa­sions that I do, I sim­ply use my iPhone.

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sun visor smart­phone hold­er (click to see the image larger)

I bought a lit­tle base on Ebay for close to $10 that clips to the sun visor of my SUV and holds the phone straight in front of my eyes.  And with the turn-by-turn GPS nav­i­ga­tion that Google Maps pro­vides I arrive at every des­ti­na­tion on a dime.

So I hope this post puts these ques­tions to rest once and for all.  But if you still need any addi­tion­al help feel free to drop me a line at info@prxgps.com or call me at 787–664-7494, ext 110, leave me a mes­sage and I’ll get back to you in a few minutes.

And above all, enjoy Puer­to Rico,

©2014,Orlando Mer­gal, MA
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Bilin­gual Con­tent Cre­ator, Blog­ger, Pod­cast­er,
Author, Pho­tog­ra­ph­er and New Media Expert
Tel. 787–750-0000, Mobile 787–306-1590

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Dis­clo­sure of Mate­r­i­al Con­nec­tion: Some of the links in this post are “affil­i­ate links.” This means that if you click on a link and pur­chase an item, I will receive an affil­i­ate com­mis­sion. Regard­less, I only rec­om­mend prod­ucts or ser­vices that I use per­son­al­ly and believe will add val­ue to my read­ers. I am dis­clos­ing this in accor­dance with the Fed­er­al Trade Commission’s 16 CFR, Part 255: “Guides Con­cern­ing the Use of Endorse­ments and Tes­ti­mo­ni­als in Advertising.”