Andrew and I have done a remarkably good job of keeping out of the jaws of con artists so far, or perhaps we´ve been extraordinarily lucky that a couple of obvious marks like ourselves hadn´t been pegged yet. Either way, we got our first taste of that sort of thing yesterday.
After we´d taken the motorboat ride (in the rain) from Santa Cruz to San Cristobal, flown to Guayaquil, and then flown into Lima, we were tired and ready to get to the hostel. We politely waved at the two hundred plus people who were waiting on friends, family, or clients outside of the customs area and after drawing more of this crazy money from the ATM we set out to find a taxi.
There in the airport a cabbie was getting his shoes polished, but he jumped up mid-job to get us. We told him where we wanted to go and he produced a laminated card showing that district for $25. As we´d gotten taxi rides from that area for not $25, but 25 soles (their money; approximately $8), I asked "¿Soles o Dollares?". I didn´t hear his answer so I said, "25 soles?" He said yes and off we went.
We were winding our way along the various terrifying roads as he tried to bolster my confidence talking about the great service that his taxi company provided and that we knew it was secure because he had good identification. In fact, he mentioned (this conversation is going on mostly in Spanish, of which mine is poor, though certainly better than his English) that a gringo had gotten in what he thought was a taxi the other day only to be taken to some alley, robbed, and shot. I agreed that I wouldn´t like to be killed. We also talked about how high the price of gas was. Then he started saying something about how for the airport, or for the government, in order not to pay some tax when he went back I needed to fill out a basic form, to show that he could gain readmittance without having to pay the toll into the airport parking lot (at least, this was what I understood, though I was having a hard time of it).
At any rate, as we were getting to our area, he pulled into a gas station. I was a bit uncomfortable because I didn´t like the idea of sitting there in Lima at night, but then he wanted me to give him money for gas. I told him I wasn´t paying money for gas. That was when he explained that the gas meter (which I had pointed out was nearly full) wasn´t accurate and that the money from the gas would come out of the price for the trip. I went to hand him the 25 soles and that´s when he scoffed and said "dollars!"
Suffice it to say I very sternly said no. He pulled out his little laminate again and showed how the trip wasn´t even $25 but more like $50, because of the ten dollar per person tax (what I hadn´t understood before) and some other company tax. I was struggling to explain to him that regardless of what the paper said, before we had gotten in the car, he had agreed to soles.
He got very upset, to the point that I was concerned that he would try to get physical. In his broken English he howled, "Gas is mas que 25 soles! That like 8 dollars! I been drive hour!" I apologized to him but held firm that he had said soles. He made some suggestion that he was going to drive us back to the airport, which, since I was so worked up, was fine with me; I wasn´t about to get jobbed like that. I was concentrating so hard, trying to figure out what to say, that apparently I missed out on some grade-A whining. Andrew kept hearing him say, "You got taxes in April; I got taxes now!"
Though things were tense they were not scary. That is, until he yanked the wheel over, stopped the car on the side of the road, got out of the car and bolted into some building. There we were in the middle of Lima with no idea where we were and a pissed off cabby had just rushed in some building for what could have been a sinister purpose. I jumped up out of the car and ran to the back of the car to get my k-bar out of my bag. The back latch was locked so I tried to get into it from the back door (it was a hatchback). Andrew didn´t like the idea of me getting the knife at all, thinking that all it would do was escalate the problem; he very well could have been right, but I didn´t like the situation at all.
At that moment the cabbie came out with a reasonably well dressed younger man. I stopped messing with the bag because I didn´t want them to see me going for a knife, but I told Andrew to get it while I went around to fight/argue/who-knew with them. Fortunately, the cabbie had stopped at a hostel that he knew of where people spoke English and he´d grabbed a porter to translate. Pfew.
The cabbie explained himself to the porter, who told me what I already knew. I told him what I already told the cabbie. The porter looked like he sympathized with the two gringos getting taken for the proverbial ride. All I knew was that I sure as hell wasn´t backing down. Perhaps thats in my genes. I still remember the time when I was seven and saw my father do a modified Sumo match with a gondoleer that tried a similar ruse in Venice. At any rate, I was seeing red.
Fortunately for all involved, that was when Andrew rolled down the window. "Compromise! We´ll give you five dollars more." The cabbie continued to whine; he hated the idea. I wasn´t about to back down when I knew I was right; I hated the idea. Andrew continued, to the cabbie, "Look, take the 25 soles and the $5. We´re already almost here," and to me, "dude, what are you doing? At the end of the day it´s five dollars." I started seeing his point, though I wasn´t happy about it.
The cabbie agreed and we got to our hostel eventually. I didn´t end up having exact change so I had to give the "#$!#$ 30 soles plus the five. Once we got up in the room, Andrew had a nice discussion with me about the necessity of pulling my head out of my fourth point of contact since it hadn´t even occurred to me to bargain with the guy.
After we´d gone out for supper and a beer or two (at a tacky Peruvian Texan bar, where two lithe waitresses wearing the bar uniform of ultra-tight jeans, rolled up loosely buttoned blouses, and cowboy hats did an impromptu booty shaking dance session for the awed patrons), we´d finally gotten to a point where getting jobbed was mildly amusing. Oh, and we came to the agreement that Lima sucks.
We are now in Cusco. The Elevation (11,000ft) is kicking my butt. We head off for the Inca Trail and Macchu Picchu in two days.
One thing that I forgot to mention about the trip so far has been that our favorite entertainment so far have been the taxi rides (exluding the aformentioned example) in the big cities, since there are no lanes and seat belts, and the makeshift road rollercoaster that the locals used on Santa Cruz in the Galapagos. Basically, they´d welded a cartoon dog´s head over the chassis of a truck and then tacked on four to five trailers with benches, which also were done up to look like cartoon dogs. We saw this thing careening over the streets while we were eating supper one night so after we´d finished drinking it seemed like the perfect thing to do. We were right. To make it exciting, the driver would whip the thing all over the roads, regardless of lanes or even sidewalks it seemed.
No comments:
Post a Comment