Taxicab Adventures

I met a really nice Finnish couple in Estelí, and after talking with them at a café for a while, they suggested we go get check out a cool bar in town later that night. I said sure, that that sounded fine, and that I would meet them at the café at eight, and we would leave from there. Eight o’clock rolled around, and we met up. They had met another, French, couple at their hotel and they had come along to see the place as well. We went over to the Parque Central, where taxis were most likely to come passing by. We spotted one, and it stopped in the middle of the intersection to wait for us. This is an important fact.

We ran over to the taxi, and began to climb in. The car behind us started honking. Even though the taxi was over on the side of the road, that particular intersection was full of dips and potholes, and the car behind us was a “lowrider” (it was actually just a souped-up P.O.S., but there you are) and it didn’t want to cross anywhere but where the taxi was stopped. Now, I know that five people can’t get into a taxi super quickly, but it didn’t take that long, maybe 20-30 seconds tops. The guys in the car behind us seemed to think it was an eternity, though, from the sound of their shouting. We scrambled in, and the taxi started to pull forward. The car behind followed through, but instead of speeding ahead of the taxi, in order to continue the massive hurry he was in, the car pulled up alongside the taxi, and I watched from the backseat as the guys in the car started to insult and harass the taxi driver. Uh-oh. This isn’t good. Insults started flying, and there was much shouting of things like “Suck this!” or “Your sister…” (all in Spanish of course), and both parties started to get pretty pissed off.

Ah c’mon! All I wanted to do was go out, see this supposedly cool place, and then come back and do work in my hotel room. I didn’t ask for a streetfight! The guys in the other car stopped yelling for a second, which was good, but then they swung their car to the right, nearly ramming it into the taxi’s front end. Whoa! Hey! I’m riding here! If you guys are going to get into a demolition derby, at least let the poor tourists out! Then, the next thing I know, our taxi driver has whipped out a machete (where he got it from, I’ll never know) and is waving it out the window, swinging it at the other car as both vehicles inch forward, neither one in a hurry to get anywhere now. Wow, okay. At this point everyone in the taxi has gone silent (except the driver, who was still spewing expletives) and are looking at each other, as if to say, “If I die, you can have my stereo.” Things were getting pretty heated, and I was worried we were going to have to open the door and run, but suddenly the taxi driver seemed to realize that he had a fare, and that instead of waving his machete around, he could be making money. So with one last shot of spit towards the other car, he sped away, and looked in his rearview mirror all the way to our destination.