Goddamn cab drivers

Living in Lima, I take a lot of cabs. I haven't bothered trying the combies(sp?), but from the looks of it--crowded and obnoxious, driven by a semi-suicidal driver--I don't think I want to.

But the cabs, I take plenty of those. Each time you hail down a cab, it's a bit of a gamble because well, the cab drivers here are such colorful characters.

There's the old guy with glasses thicker than a Lego block who can't hear you and you can't quite understand (your Spanish proficiency notwithstanding).

Then there's the wierd fat guy with whom the very fact that he can manage to get a driver's licence seems like a miracle--assuming he even has a licence. You can try to tell him all the directions you want, he's gonna pass about five blocks after the turn you pointed out.

There's also the wannabe hustler, they try to rip you off. Try. Now, I don't like getting ripped off any more than the next guy, but if there is some skill, some technique to it that I couldn't outsmart, then at least I could appreciate the quality of the grift, but when they can't even do it right, why bother? One guy tried to charge me 8 soles for what should be a five minute ride in his piece of shit Tico. Another guy had the audacity to try to charge me 15 for a four minute ride (from my place to Jockey Plaza). Now, they didn't even try to argue their point, they just saw that I was a "chino" in a fairly well-to-do neighborhood and decided to grift me.

Speaking of "chinos", there's the racist cab driver. I don't care what you say, Peru is a racist country. I know a lot of Peruvians say otherwise, that Peru is the friendliset country in South America, but that's a load of bullshit. The racist cab driver is just an example of racism here in Peru. He pretends to not understand your Spanish, he calls you "chino" repeatedly, and he tries to imitate what is his idea of Chinese, as if I would understand that gibberish. This type of cab driver may also be the aforementioned "wannabe hustler", but probably only if you're a chino or gringo or otherwise not Peruvian.

I'll continue this another time.