Life in the mostly congested lane

We've spent quite a bit of time in taxis to and from airports in recent days - Lima, Sao Paolo and later on this evening, no doubt, in Buenos Aires.

When we landed in Lima airport, in Peru at 11pm, it was a madhouse. Fortunately we’d arranged on this occasion for someone to pick us up to take us into the city.  One after another well groomed men, oozing trust and brandishing their taxi credentials, offered us the obvious safe haven of a taxi in their care. We focused on looking out for a “Bader” amongst the dozens and dozens of little placards being waved around.  The crowd seemed intense and noisy and it dawned on us that there might be something unusual going on.  We learnt from one of the security staff that there was a pop artist, Chino, passing through imminently, hence the hundreds and hundreds of people, mostly girls, crowding the exit routes both in and outside the airport. 

Funny, but it seems the more you are in a rush to get to the airport, the more likely you are to get stuck in traffic, as we were on the way to leave Peru. It was one of those journeys that reassure you that you did the right thing to abandon any self-drive options.  Our driver, "Taxi Willy," as it said on his business card, was a friendly and personable guide who really knew how to handle a car.  I remember this distinctly, because that's exactly what I wrote in the visitor's book that he asked me to sign - another travel first - during a spell of particularly bad traffic near Lima airport.  It was a very well-thumbed A3 landscape book, with literally hundreds and hundreds of entries, all seemingly pretty complimentary, judging from the ones that I read. He was about 60 and had had his own advertising business when he was younger, but the business failed in the days of hyperinflation and economic crisis in the late 1980s, hence his current career. He took it all in his stride and was clearly at home in the environment of missed deadlines in heavy traffic, the frequent slamming of brakes, last second lane changes, and the chaotic melody of honking horns.

And here we are now on the way to Sao Paolo airport with plenty of time to spare ahead of our flight to Buenos Aires and ironically the traffic is moving freely.  Nevertheless, we are weaving in and out of cars at 80mph on the appropriately named Ayrton Senna freeway with a young taxi driver, who has displayed his generosity twice already by dispensing some helpful advice on lane discipline to a motorbike and a car. It's quite impressive, even if a little disconcerting, that he manages this between checking his mobile phone, following the sat nav and watching TV, yes TV, on a small 6" screen to the right of the steering wheel, (apparently for the benefit of the boys in the back).  There's scarcely room for the credit card swipe machine and of course the taxi meter.

Reflecting on those two experiences, it made me wonder.  There are old taxi drivers and there are bold taxi drivers...........