Bogotá is heaving with little zippy yellow taxis, and the only times
when you can´t find one are 8 in the morning 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 people usually just say
“What do you want to pay me, ten thousand?” and everyone just ignores
the meter.
Many guidebooks to Bogotá carry grave warnings about taking taxis off
the street. About half of the taxi drivers in Bogotá are unlicensed so
this is probably not bad advice, although it´s perhaps more of 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 security adviser at the
British Embassy calls 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. This apparently 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. This kind
of thing doesn´t happen quite so much 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 that dangerous.
Taxi
drivers 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.
