Life is still far from normal, but people in Puerto Rico’s capital, San Juan, are trying to piece together their lives, 10 days after Hurricane Maria hit.

Even in the capital, a hub for relief efforts, people’s daily lives are hobbled by the lack of electricity, food, drinkable water and transport.

At 2.30am, bakers start working. In a little shop with enough electricity to power the ovens, bakers mix and roll the dough into thousands of loaves.

Hours later, around 6am, David Darg, walks to the front of the line and sheepishly shows his bright blue badge emblazoned with “San Juan se levanta” – San Juan rises up – which indicates he works with the city government.

Most of the city is awake at this time. Without electricity, life is dictated by the sunlight.

Darg, vice-president of international operations for Operation Blessing International, a disaster relief NGO, brings the bread back to where he sleeps each night on a cot – the operations center for the city government.

An army of municipal workers quickly turn the bread into sandwiches to be distributed to people in need, while Darg goes on to coordinate other relief projects.

Heideger Medina. Photograph: Amanda Holpuch/The Guardian

Around this time, Heideger Medina is walking to work – the only thing that’s stopping him from leaving the island. “As long as I have a job, I will stay,” he said.



Medina sleeps badly because of the mosquitoes and heat, which wake him up at three-hour intervals throughout the night.

Medina is a parking attendant but was only able to return to work on Friday after spending more than a week of playing board games and cards, cleaning neighborhood debris, and checking constantly for news from his friends, many of whom he still hasn’t heard from.

Some of his friends take refuge in his home, which has drinkable water and a cellphone signal. His mother cooks mountains of food for all the guests, though the meals are mainly vegetables unless someone makes a run to the grocery store and buys meat, which must be cooked shortly after because they don’t have a working refrigerator. “I’m starting to eat vegan – oh my God – I’m a meat person,” he said.

The day for 19-year-old Carolan Paula Paredes and her 14-year-old cousin is crafted around lunch and cellphone signals. Paula Paredes’s aunt works at a functioning restaurant where they can eat meals all day and charge their phones and computers. It is also close to a Starbucks, which has become an important destination for area teens.

‘I try to stay calm but it’s really bad’

School is closed, in Paula Paredes’s case for one or two months, so the teenagers sit in the shade on the beach, laughing in the sand, to escape the oppressive midday heat. “I miss my college, my friends, I don’t have a communication with them,” she said.

The sheer boredom and the stresses of life without easy access to basic necessities are taking a toll. “I try to stay calm but it’s really bad,” she said.

While the girls are ordering frappuccinos, Martin Scholl is probably reading the news outside a working hotel, like the Marriott in Condado, which offers free wifi to everyone. There are 50 to 100 people using this service at all times.

Scholl is staying in a friend’s apartment because his home flooded, and is now filled with raw sewage. “I refuse to step into it – it’s a health hazard of the first order,” he said.

He has had property on Puerto Rico for 20 years but became a more permanent resident last year as part of a program to help create jobs for the island, which is sunk by a $73bn debt. On Saturday, he was set to leave for the mainland so he could keep his software business running in a place with functioning telecommunications.

Cristina Otero and Mark Barthelemy. Photograph: Amanda Holpuch/The Guardian

Scholl is still using other businesses’ wifi around 3pm, when Mark Barthelemy and Cristina Otero, friends from Boston, are forced out of their own hotel because it shuts down the power for a few hours each afternoon.

They landed in Puerto Rico for the first time two days before Maria hit and have been shuttled around hotel rooms since their vacation started. Their first place closed for the hurricane and the second wouldn’t extend their booking when their flight was cancelled after spending six or seven hours at the airport. “We definitely plan on coming back,” said Barthelemy.

Their hotel reopens around 7pm, in keeping with the curfew aimed at keeping people off the streets since the day after Maria hit.

Foot and car traffic picks up just before the deadline as people, including attorney Richard Schell-Asad, head back to wherever they are living in the wake of the storm, which has prompted concern that the island’s death toll is much higher than the 16 reported by the territory’s government.

You see a lot of zombies walking around Richard Schell-Asad

The attorney’s base is his girlfriend’s apartment building, which has electricity in the hallway so they are able to use an extension cord to power a refrigerator and portable fan.

He spends most of his day near his own apartment building, checking to see if its electricity has been restored. There, he chats with his neighbors, who he met for the first time after Maria. Then, he visits his nearby law office and leaves handwritten notes to communicate with his law partner since they never know when the other person will be there.

He walks almost everywhere to save gas. “You see a lot of zombies walking around,” he said.

Without electricity, there are no streetlights and there is no comforting glow from buildings. It is almost impossible to see the faces of people walking towards you – everyone is a silhouette.

Luis Vega Ramos Photograph: Amanda Holpuch/The Guardian

Luis Vega Ramos, a member of Puerto Rico’s house of representatives, is exempt from the curfew as a government official. He has nothing to legislate during the day and instead spends it with other municipal workers trying to assist in the disaster response.

Still, like most others, he is in bed by 10pm.

Before Vega Ramos goes to sleep on a sofa, hours earlier than normal, the last thing he does is take care of his 84-year-old mother, who he is living with because she insists on staying in her home and he doesn’t want to leave her alone. He said: “Maria brought me back to my home to live under my mother’s roof.”

Vega Ramos, like everyone affected, is looking forward to the day when life is back to normal, and they know that won’t be tomorrow.