A Taxi Please

As I walk, with my feet-operated mind, thought the streets of Cancun I encounter a great variety of people from all sorts of places. It makes me wonder if there anyone who is actually from here…It just seems that everyone is from somewhere else, some place I have never heard about before, names that slip through Mexican lips as it was some spell, taking me way back in time, and I find myself wondering about all sorts of past, their personal past and the past that brought them here, the recent past, and the cultural past.

The CSs, the expats, the neighbors, the taxi drivers, the water man, the policeman, the Hotel workers, the tour agencies salesmen, all of them apart from my good friend Roger and his six siblings, all seem to have traveled to Cancun looking for a fresh start.

The roaming taxi drivers are currently my favorites to discover, not only because the guidebooks say not to , (we all know how a “Don’t” makes it all more interesting) and to only get taxis from supermarkets or Hotels, which fare is at least more 50 pesos than the ones that are driving around the city, but also because every time I jumped on one it has been a 2 to 3 dls discovery experience.

I usually only use Taxis at night, long after the buses have stopped running and I have no other way of getting home, I mean I possibly could walk, but those 10 km of distance between my current home and the centre say: no jump on a taxi or you will never get to sleep. I guess I could do it one day and put it up on the blog under “Cancun marathon – do I still own a camera?”

As soon as I get the taxi driver to stop, the chances are: 99% that will be a man, 95% that is night, 90% that is not from Cancun, 50% that will come on to me and ask me if I had sex before, 35% are on FB, 65% of the time are on their Blackberrys’. I tend to use my amazing sense of humour to get past the sex conversation, that quickly leads to “are you religious?” or “are you a lesbian?” or more recently “are you a virgin?” mostly I just Laugh Out Loud when this happens and my temporary chauffer always thinks I am very funny and usually we can move on. Only once I put my claws out and my latin arrogance and pointed out that “nearly everyone in the world has had sex, and I am not interested” with a tone of voice that not many people have heard, although you’ll find that arrogance costs an extra 10 pesos, seen that when he dropped me he charged more than he had initially said, I guess I am not going to be driving taxis as my new job after all, and just to think that was a 5% day trip!

Usually, all the other conversations move on to where I am from and what lead me here, and then me finding out about them. Luckily, when God created Latin people He decided let’s create people who are comfortable with themselves and can talk about their private life, love, children, with no fear, which course makes my taxi trips very interesting.

Not only they’re all from somewhere else, as they all seem to work from 3pm to 3am, (I don’t seem to be able to get on the morning shift taxis), some come because of the lack of well paid work. The answer is mostly the same to my Portunhol question “te gusta hacer isso?” Course they like it, especially if it’s either that, low wages, or “Narco”.

The huge Mexican with the extremely blackened windows, driving his car, looking through the clear rectangle in the windscreen he says yes, he’s done this for two years, got him in a lot of trouble with women and with the money he is going to start a “carreira”, go to University', be someone else. Mario tries to be useful, wants to make sure he gets a faithful customer, so he is very nice and makes sure I don’t leave his taxi without his phone number in case I can’t find a taxi, loyal customers means stable income. Cipriano, a family man, a religious man, a 10 years taxi driver works hard to see his teenage daughter growing up and looks forward to see his wife who is at home waiting for him on a Sunday night. He has met many people, but probably the most curious one is sitting beside him, this strange girl from a country he doesn’t know anything about. Is it in America? Do you speak Catalan? I nearly lie when he asks me if I have a boyfriend, I had decided the previous night I was going to say my brother was my boyfriend, (well he wouldn’t know I would be talking about my brother… for the obvious reasons), but I feel it’s safe to be honest. I answer his naïve questions with a welcoming smile, he seems puzzled by this “Agnostic Portuguese”, but as soon as I say: “We should all be the best we can no matter what we believe in”, he smiles back at me, I made a friend.

I get out of the taxi, shake his hand, close the door behind as so many other taxi doors I have closed before and with a key in mind hand I get ready to open a door to a different world.