The following is a true story. Pick your taxi driver carefully!
With only five hours of intermittent, groggy sleep over a full day of traveling, barely awake after digesting course after course of First Class food, I walked out of the international airport in Santiago, Chile, and handed my bags to Ricardo, my newly acquired taxi driver. How I had managed to acquire him, I'm not sure. He seemed to magically appear at my side as I walked out of customs and into the mob of frenzied people that seem to be located outside every Latin American airport.
"Santiago Park Plaza, por favor," I said to Ricardo, as he lobbed the bags into the trunk of a weary Datsun.
"In Providencia?"
"Si."
My impromptu linguistic abilities nearly exhausted, it soon became clear, however, that Ricardo knew less English than I did Spanish. Ricardo showed me exactly how fast the cab could accelerate while approximately pointing the vehicle at the airport exit. Then, while still doing his best Formula One imitation, Ricardo turned and looked at me, rattling off a few lines of Spanish that, to my point of view, were moving faster than the speeding taxi.
The guidebooks warn you about this kind of driver, providing all kinds of ways to say slow down ("Podria conducir mas despachio?").
It soon became obvious that Ricardo desired to stay in any one lane for no more than a second. And if he wasn't exactly straddling two lanes to keep his options open, then he was darting from side to side, always looking for that narrow passageway that would allow him to pass without losing more than one layer of paint.
I chose this time to try out a line I had memorized from the phrasebook, Wicked Spanish:
"Por favor denos cascos," I said, politely asking for a helmet.
"Si," this was indeed funny, we agreed moments later.
Unfortunately, this simple exchange had a deleterious effect on Ricardo's already questionable driving. In retrospect, I suppose it is a bit difficult to control a fast-moving vehicle while facing backwards and laughing heartily. Moments after our exchange, he managed to enter the median at 120 kph and run over the curb of a crossing that connected the divided highway.
Wump, wump, thwap, thwap, thwap, thwap...My head bounced off the bare metal roof of the cab.
All four tire hubs neatly acquired a notch exactly the shape of the curb. What rubber remained in the aging, bald tires was instantly disintegrated into a toxic black cloud that rose behind us.
Thwap, thwap, thwap, thwap...
The previously muy machismo Ricardo had in my mind just become the venerably machismo (and mucho loco) Ricardo.
But Ricardo wasn't done amazing me. His shock appeared to last no more than ten seconds. He quickly pulled off the highway, got out of the taxi, and shook his head seriously as he took in the damage. Out came the jack. Up went the car. From the roadside he scavenged some pieces of wood, and in moments, my former chariot was up on blocks, sans tires.
"Dios minutos," Ricardo said to me, quoting the standard Latin American time estimate.
Yeah, right.
Ricardo next hailed a passing bus, threw the tires in, and then climbed in after them, leaving me alone at the side of a busy, dusty highway in the middle of nowhere. What was once a taxi now looked like a candidate for extended parts scavenging. With a gringo standing next to it.
I thought I'd be okay--just grab my stuff from the trunk and hail one of the empty cabs I occasionally saw heading towards the airport on the other side of the highway. But Ricardo wasn't having any of that. Unnoticed by me, he had closed the trunk, and there was no inside release. With five thousand dollars worth of camera equipment now entombed, no way I was going anywhere.
But I refused to panic.
I looked for an alternate key. I looked everywhere for a hidden release. I tentatively examined and yanked on the backseat for possible access. Nothing doing.
So I waited. If this was some new-fangled tourist trap scam, it sure was a complicated (and slow moving) one. I fended off a passing pedestrian and a curious taxi driver who suspected opportunity. With no obvious, simple out, I was going to see what Ricardo came up with.
What he came up with was a set of workable tires. From what I have now dubbed the Divine Bus of the Tire Gods came Ricardo, smile on his face, rolling what looked like real wheels down the steps. Almost exactly an hour after he left, he was back and eagerly mounting his horse's new shoes.
Of course, close examination showed that these new shoes weren't exactly new. One had a mysterious bulge on the inside, while another showed the signs of having been forced into some semblance of round by an unidentified blunt force. Perhaps they were new to Ricardo--they were certainly new to me. All I cared about at this point was that they would last long enough to get me to the hotel (they did).
As Ricardo tightened the last lug nut, he looked up at me. A big, silly grin burst across his face. "Buenvinidos Chile!" he said.
Welcome, indeed.