Joe le taxi

Today´s illuminating report on Bogota methods of transport will be on the taxi. The city is heaving with little zippy yellow taxis, and the only times when you can´t find one are 8 in the morning (don´t know why, there just never are any) and whenever it rains. They don´t really have meters in the strict sense of the word, sometimes they have a little counter that slowly counts up til 114 or whatever, and then theoretically you look up how much 114 should be on a kind of fares table that they have hanging up, but in practice they usually just say "What do you want to pay me, ten thousand?" and everyone just ignores the meter.

When we had our security briefing from the British Embassy guy he had grave warnings about taking taxis off the street. About half of the taxi drivers in Bogota are unlicensed so this is probably not bad advice, although i think it´s more a concern at night when you can´t see the numbers on the side or if it´s a decent-looking taxi or a total banger. The Embassy guy called them "ill-advised taxis", and an ill-advised taxi almost always has a hilarious driver who likes listening to banging Caribbean music and has the rear view mirror festooned with rosaries and Colombian flags. When you call one at night things are usually a little more subdued, maybe with a sheet of perspex separating you from the driver´s musical choices.

At night taxi drivers always always run the red lights. Gracie told me that this dates back a few years when there were a spate of robbings of cars waiting at the lights, and the government actually advised drivers to cautiously go through red lights in order to avoid stopping in bad areas. I´m pretty sure this kind of thing doesn´t happen a lot these days but they´ve stuck with the habit of just racing right through. The roads are pretty quiet after about 10pm anyway, so it isn´t dangerous.

They have quite an amazing knowledge of the city, you almost never have to give them directions and they don´t have satnav, big respect to the taxistas for this. Although the streets in Bogota are numbered according to what seems to be a very logical pattern - the ones going from east to west are calles going from 1-200 or whatever, and then the north south ones are carreras numbered the same way - but in practice it´s not at all simple and there are calles 26B and 26C and then suddenly 28A with no sign of any 27s. When they do get lost they have an incredibly strong torch which directs a really strong beam at a small area, and then they crawl along the streets in the cab shining the light on all the houses to see the numbers.

Coming soon - bike travel in Bogota! (Don´t hold your breaths for this one since first i need to sort out the flat business, and sine they come unfurnished buying a bed is a marginally higher priority than buying a bike. But only marginally.)