A woman doesn’t reach the age of 57 without some experience of taxi cabs. I’ve been around a bit, Toronto, Montreal, Edmonton, Calgary, London, Aalborg, Mexico and Cuba. Until I got to NYC I have never been turned down by a cabbie. Just like in the movies, you see yellow cabs all over NYC but it is not as easy as in the movies to get a cab. But it is a piece of cake compared to getting a cab in Ecuador. Here you must master the art of negotiating but first you have to master the art of telling them where you want to go. Even when you have the name of the hostel and street address it can be obscure to them where you want to go. Once you think you have established location the cost bargaining begins.
In Quito the cost was usually $2.00 within the city. Sometimes only $1.00. We got a cab in Bahia to take us to Manta for $30.00. Barbara wanted to pay $20.00 but when the local expats told her $30 was reasonable she accepted the price and off we were. We had luggage jammed in the trunk and also as a passenger in the back seat. Wenda and I are very familiar with each other, let me tell you!
Yesterday, however, we had our ultimate experience in negotiations. We had a trolley loaded up with household goods and a second cart with our groceries. We also had our friend Yves with us and the 2 “drivers” of our carts. Barb flagged down a cab and tried to clarify that we wanted to go to San Jose (just like the song “Do you want to go to San Jose?”). Before we knew what was happening we were surrounded by at least 4 other people who were seriously engaged in the conversation, all conducted in Spanish and perfectly incomprehensible to me. I just stood back and enjoyed the show. Yves was filming the episode for his documentary on Barb’s experience in buying her home at this resort. After the first round of negotiations he came up to me and said we looked like Hollywood celebrities with this massive crowd of onlookers. I had to laugh.
At this point the man in the red shirt said “One minute, taxi for $20” and he hurried off . We waited around for 20 minutes and I just thought “thank goodness we have no meat products” since the heat was great, at least 30C. I was just going with the flow as I knew Barb would get us back to the house one way or another. Every once in a while Barb talked to another cabbie but nothing was happening. There was a huge lineup of people waiting to go into the mall and of course we were the object of their curiosity. At last a pickup truck showed up and we loaded all our stuff in the back, and we settled into the seats when the driver said $60. Holy cow, you should have heard Barb go at him and I could see what was coming next. You guessed it, the Mexican movie, out we went and unloaded everything. At this point Yves had already gone off in his cab so he was happily unaware of this exodus. We will have a story for him today when he visits us at the house. Fortunately Barb got another cab within 2 minutes who knew where San Jose beach was and we only had to pay $25.
Come hell or high water I am staying here today and shall refuse any offers to go into a moving vehicle.
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