Around The World In 80 Waves

At the end of my day of sightseeing I had got off at the last stop which was the Multiplaza shopping centre. My latest digs have a kitchen so I bought some food in order to prepare something wholesome as opposed to the spaceman diet of packaged or junk food I am regularly living off. With a couple of boxes of groceries I didn’t fancy the walk home so hailed a cab.

I made the mistake of not asking the fare when I got into the car, but knew how cheap cabs should be, so reacted with incredibility when the driver wanted $10 for the short trip to my hostel upon arrival at the end of the street.

It was at this point that I realised that my driver may not have been quite as mentally unstable as Robert De Niro’s character Travis Bickle, but he may have come a close second!

After I had the audacity to suggest the fare should be no more than $2.80 he went nuts ranting at me in the front of the car. He locked the doors and started to drive off. When I pointed out that he was going the wrong way I got ranted at once more and understood enough to get that he was taking me back to the Multiplaza. I think that he thought I would find that terrible and beg to pay $10, but I just said ok finding the situation rather amusing in the back of his car. Sure enough he took me back to the exact spot where I had been picked up and turfed me out at the side of the road. Laughing as I got out I wished him ‘Feliz Viaje’ which roughly translates to bon voyage, and I dont think this helped calm his mania, but I closed the door as he sped off having got nothing for providing me with a further ightseeing our of the city for free.

30 seconds later I was in the next cab that wanted $5 for the trip, which I happily paid before chuckling all the way back down a road I was traversing for the third time in under an hour.