Conversations with Taxi drivers in Ecuador

Childhood Memories

One of the pleasant memories I have of India as a child, is of my father talking to taxi drivers in Hindi in "Kulkutta" (Kolkata/Calcutta). We were Bengalis, living outside West Bengal, who used to visit "Kulkutta" for a vaction or a family wedding. Many of the tax drivers came from other states, especially U.P. or Bihar, but could speak Bengali fluently, while there others who were still learning Bengali. If you want to be a minimalist, you can avoid conversation, by mentioning the destination, and paying according to the meter- but my father would often engage them by speaking in Hindi. This I think was a calculated move: he knew that if he spoke to them in Bengali, the driver would think that we thought of him as an outsider- and wanted him to integrate into Bengali society by learning the local language and that we as Bengalis had xenophobic feelings against them; many of the drivers on the other hand spoke in Bengali, not only because it was the lingua franca, but because it would not show explicitly that they were outsiders. My father speaking Hindi set them at ease- it showed them that he was a well-traveled Bengali who knew another language, one who was possibly aware of their situation as a fellow immigrant in other parts of India and one who willing to reach halfway across the aisle to talk to them. Sometimes the conversations were trite but sometimes they were rich as it is with most things- an experience is too boring if it follows a predictable scripted path. I was a silent passenger who would dream of growing up and engaging in adult conversation.

Background Information

We were recently in Ecuador for three weeks, and had to take some taxis to get around. Almost all the taxi drivers we met in Quito and elsewhere were honest, and charged us the correct fare.We mostly got around on foot and bus, but sometimes taking a taxi was more convenient- like getting to the hotel after landing at the Quito airport, while at other times the bus did not take you where you wanted to go to- the Guayasamin art museum in Quito. Sometimes the rides were really short- like going from the bus stop to the hotel in Otavalo- and this did not give much chance for conversation, other than the taxi driver asking us where we were from. At other times, the driver would turn on his music, and not pay any attention to us or we would be too tired to start the conversation with a silent driver. Taxi conversation is a clear example of two way traffic.

It so happened that the first taxi ride, we took when we landed in Quito was a pleasant experience with a knowledgeable driver, and so I took down notes of the conversation in my notebook the next day. Over the next few days there were more conversations, and more notes. I knew that people would ask me about my experience in Ecuador, and so thought about writing a blog about this: partly as a tribute to my father, and partly because I enjoyed the human experience of connecting with someone in their native tongue. So I am writing this blog based on my notes and fresh details that come to my mind as I meditate on this blog for the past three days. I hope it encourages me to have the courage to speak to more taxi drivers in the future- I am often a silent passenger, and regret that I did not find converse with drivers of taxis and buses that much.

One of the issues I faced was that, because I spoke Spanish well enough to answer where I come from, and can make small talk about the weather, the driver would talk to me as if I were a native speaker. As a result of this, I was not be able to follow all of the subsequent conversation- interrupting him would have meant disturbing the flow-while continuing to listen would help me get the gist of the message.

First Taxi Ride: Landing in Quito Airport to Hotel

The first conversation we had was with the taxi driver when we landed in Quito on on Dec 31, 2012. Given that it was Dec 31st, there were not many taxis around at the airport, and we had to share a taxi with an Ecuadorean woman, and a guy who seemed to be Ecuadorean too. The drive was mostly through the newer section of Quito, on mostly deserted streets under the million watchful eyes of  tall, silent concrete buildings, bathed in the urine glow of sodium vapour lamps. At some intersections and alleyways, there people setting fire to effigies; effigies made of old clothes and paper faces with eyes, that were being stomped on to say goodbye to the old year.

The driver was a man in his 50s. Our fellow passenger spoke fluent Spanish- and the driver of the four door new Toyota Yaris, assumed the same- but the passenger asked the driver to guess where he was from. The driver guessed Korean, Japanese and Chinese, before the passenger  corrected him by saying "Taiwan".

The driver's repsonse, "Nosotros parecen igualitos"- we look like the same people.

He chatted with the Taiwanese for a while in fast Spanish about his trip. We only started talking to him after he had dropped off the Taiwanese, and the Ecuadorean woman at their respective hotels. After asking us where we were from, the driver surprised us with his knowledge about Hindus and their culture. He said that he like the weave of India clothes, and that saris had beautiful designs on them. He suggested that we must visit Otavalo, a town known for its handicrafts in the north. After describing Otavalo in great detail, he told us how to get there using the bus, and how much the tickets would cost. He took us to our hotel- it was full, and he was preparing to take us to another place, when the hotel manager said that a kind Cuban traveller was ready to share the 3 bed dorm room he was staying in with us, and we parted wishing each other, "Feliz Año" (Happy Year).

Cooperativa or Not?

One of the things, I noticed about the taxis in Ecuador, is that each of them, belongs to an association: a rectangular area mentioning the name of the organization is usually painted on the passenger door of the taxi. After a week in Ecuador, I asked the taxi driver who was taking us to the Latacunga (a town two hours south of Quito) bus station from our hotel about this. He said that according to the constitution each association can have upto a maximum of 25 members. Our driver owned his taxi, and paid some dues to the association. He mentioned that that about a third of the drivers of taxis in Latacunga were "chofers"- people who were driving taxis for other owners. I also noticed that vendors at bus stations, both male and female, who sell fruits, chips, bottled-water and snacks have embroidered badges on their garments, saying for example, "Association of Vendors of the Latacunga Bus Terminal ". I have to do more research on this, and find out how the cooperatives work.

Taxis drive along the San Francisco square in Quito. (If you look closely at the  passenger door of the first taxi, it says "Cooperativa Itchiabia")

In comparison in a smaller place like Mindo (~ 4000 people), there are private vehicles that can be hired as taxis. These vehicles might have a paper placard that says taxi- but do not have a marking on the side of the taxi. Even there the drivers maintain order, and only take passengers in the order in which they are parked.

Private vehicles waiting to be used as Taxis in Mindo, Ecuador.  The drivers are patiently waiting and chatting with each other. When I was having lunch at the restaurant nearby, I noticed that other the drivers had been chatting happily with each other at the nearby town center.

Right wing or Left Wing?

Another memorable taxi ride was from Quilotoa to Tigua. We were in Quilotoa to see the famous volcanic crater-lake- but had decided that we were too tired to do any hiking that day; so we decided to visit the nearby town of Tigua, an hour away to see the famous art galleries there. The driver was polishing his 4-door olive green Mazda pickup with a rag. We got going after he was done buffing his truck. I sat in the front next to him, while Sonya sat in the back. We picked up a few passengers along the way- some sat next to Sonya, while others climbed into the pickup truck bed.

The driver was an amiable young man with a baseball cap in his early twenties. He told us that he drove all around the region everyday: he was based in Quilotoa, but travelled to Tigua, Chugchilan, Zumbahua, and other neighbouring towns in the region. He asked me about my job and what I did. He wondered which was the most advanced country in the world. When I asked him if he meant in terms of education, art, military or something else, he replied that he meant technology and something like space travel.I told him that I really did not know. We had to stop for about an hour at a place on the road where they were widening the road. The bored security guard told us that they were paving a section, and we had to wait till this was done. We waited behind a full sized Chevrolet pickup. Two large dump trucks stopped behind us, and the two moustachioed drivers kept their engines running and sat on boulders on the side of the road to smoke cigarettes. The line grew longer with two blue iridescent Cotopaxi line buses and other pickup trucks and cars.

 Our driver talked to the Chevrolet driver in front of us, and all the rest of the people on our truck went and sat in the other truck. This was a bit mysterious to me. With boredom setting in, the woman passenger who had been travelling with us stayed inside, but all the men got off the truck and wandered to the side of the road- where the narrow Toachi river snaked its way amidst boulders and rocks. Soon I was part of the circle staring listlessly at the ravine below.

The driver of my truck asked the driver of the Chevrolet pickup, an older man with nice clothes in his fifties, the same question he had asked me. 

The older guy was unequivocal in his answer: "USA". He continued by adding that we Ecuadorians are smart too.We have 6 smart people from our country who work for NASA. It is just that the current politicians here are no good, and that Rafael Correa should not be the next president. He proceeded to inquire me about my origins and what I did for a living. He said that I should go back to India, and do something for my country. He said that I should start something even if there was nothing there. He continued by mentioning that they need to lower the taxes in Zumbahua. He also wanted tax breaks for foreign companies which would encourage them to invest in Zumbahua. Look, he continues, Zumbahua has all kinds of agricultural produce: milk, maize, meat, wool and many artisanal products. They could be packed and exported outside the country at premium prices to bring more money into the region.

The audience around him listened carefully- they it turned out later were being given a free lift by this businessman to their final destination, while my driver would drop us at Tigua- and neither disagreed or agreed. 

He pointed to the line of stopped vehicles and said, "Look! All these are imported into Ecuador", he continued:  we in Ecuador should be producing all of our own vehicles, employing many workers int he factories producing the vehicles and exporting vehicles instead of importing them. He asked me what I thought of his proposition and I silently bobbed my head up and down in agreement.

After a long wait, we were able to continue on our journey. Our Mazda driver honked at a pickup with a huge fluttering fluorescent green flag in the bag proceeding in the opposite direction- the elections were a month away in February and this was a common way to rally support in Ecuador. After this act, our driver became more eloquent, and said that the driver of the large pickup was a big business man who wastefully used his large pickup for private transportation who supported the right wing party in Ecuador. He thanked the current government for all the roads and schools constructed in the area, and added that all the people in this area were behind Correa. When I asked him about what he thought about the chances of Correa winning the election, he said that there was no doubt in his mind that Correa would win the election. After a minute of silence we discussed gas prices in Ecuador, USA and India. When he dropped us off, he took his time to tell me exactly how to catch the bus back, the range of times it would come in, and that it would have large ISINLIVI letterings on the side.

Football Fan: Bus Terminal to Hotel

Piñata for the Quito football team seen in a shop in the San Francisco Square in Quito, Ecuador

Coming back from Otavalo, with extra baggage from our purchases at the craft market, we decided to take a taxi from the Carcelan bus terminal north of Quito to our hotel in the centre of Quito in La Mariscal. The taxis were lined up in an orderly manner and the drivers were all chatting with each other. We took the taxi at the beginning of the line- the ubiquitous Nissan Sentra from the 1990s-and the driver was silent as he was listening to 94.5FM on the radio. The driver was in his 40s and wore glasses. After a while, I asked what the station was- he said it was football, and I said that he could turn up the volume as we could barely hear it in the back seat. On asking him which team he supported, he shyly replied Quito. A goal was scored on the live radio-broadcast and our conversation was interrupted by the manic commentator in the way it has become customary for Spanish commentors to announce a goal, GOOOOOOOL, GOOOOOOOOOOOOL, GOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOL- over and over again. When relative silence resumed he proceeded to explain the league system in Ecuador. I did not follow all of it with his excited Spanish- but understood that they only had one season per year, unlike the the two championship Mexican calendar, that foreign players were not allowed in the Ecuadorian league but could not figure out what he was saying about the league system in Ecuador.

When he stopped at a long traffic light, he carefully removed a pair of reading glasses, and read the exact location of our final destination from the guidebook. He took his glasses off and neatly put them back in their case. The light changed, and he drove till the next traffic light without his glasses. It was red, and he slowly put on his regular glasses, and put the case with his reading glasses carefully into the glove compartment.

We switched gears when he asked me about what I did in the US. He informed me that he had been in the US too: He had been in New York City, and there were many Ecuadorians there, although the Mexicans were the most numerous. In fact to his great dismay, he had wanted to learn speaking English there- but at his work all the people spoke Spanish, and he did not get a chance to practice his English. He had an ESl (English as a Second Language) teacher from India whom he liked, who had told him that India had many languages and other things about India. He was unhappy that he could not attend the classes regularly because he had to do two jobs everyday. He then launched into the injustice of it all- I did not follow everything from this point as this was an emotional topic for him and he started speaking quite fast. I could gather that he was there for 2 or 4 years without his family, that American workers who spoke English were treated well, and got their wages paid honestly, while the immigrants without their knowledge of English would often be treated unfairly, and that he did not get the last 15 days of his wages.

He dropped us off 2 block away from our hotel because the roads were closed due to the weekly Ciclovia: on Sunday morning in Quito some roads are closed to cars so that cyclists can ride the roads for recreation.

Politics: to the TeleferiQo

Picture of  Alberto Acosta's book titled "A brief economic history of Ecuador"

From :http://www.une.org.ec/~une/index.php/2012-07-08-04-19-37/2012-07-08-04-20-19/noticias-sobre-educacion/83-historia-economica-del-ecuador-por-alberto-acosta-tercera-edicion

During the last few days we were in Quito, we decided to take the famed TeleferiQo ropeway on a 2.2 km journey from 3100m to 3950m. When we climbed on to the taxi, the driver was intently listening to a radio program. The person who was being interviewed was Alberto Acosta Espinosa, an opposition candidate who was contesting the presidential elections in Ecuador for the Coordinadora Plurinacional por la Unidad de las Izquierdas (Plurinational Coordinating Body for the Unity of the Left). He was being grilled by the interviewer as to why he had released the third edition of his book in August 2012, just before the election. Alberto responded by saying that the book release was a coincidence because he had been working on the book for more than ten years. He proceeded to discuss the mounting external debt with China which was growing at an annual rate of 7%. The interview was civil and informative and did not have the "pressed for time" element so often seen on TV nowadays. At the commercial break, wanting to confirm my grasp of Spanish, I said,"¿Sobre la eleccion?"; the driver responded by nodding his head. I added that Rafael Correa was famous in the world for being a leftist politician. The driver let me finish my sentence but was unhappy that I thought Rafael, the current president was a left-wing candidate. He said that while Rafael says he is on the left, he was in reality a right wing candidate, and  though he always supports left-wing candidates, he wants to see change; he added- people like Chavez and Castro have been in power for too long and needed to be replaced periodically. 

He then switched topics, and we discussed the weather, traffic in Quito and the TeleferiQo. In between he said, "Salaam Malekum"- which I had to ask him to repeat- which I finally got after Sonya smiled at me from across the seat because it was in a Spanish accent and not pronounced as I have heard it in India. My beard to him meant that I was from a certain part of the world, and I managed to mumble back "Malekum Salaam". We discussed our countries of origin, and I learnt that we had passed through Ambato, the hometown of this overweight male taxi driver in his 30s a few days ago during our travels in the past week.  

As we climbed in elevation towards the aerial tram terminal, we left the car-crowded roads behind and saw greenery around us; the driver rolled down his windows, emptied his belly, took in a gulp of air and exclaimed, " ¡Nuevo pulomones!"- new lungs. 

A panoramic view of Quito and distant volcanic peaks on the TeleferiQo.

He dropped us off the nearly deserted terminal at 8:15 AM.At the top of the cable ride after taking in the sights, Sonya jokingly suggested that we try to climb Rucu Pichincha-it would be a nearly 850 m climb to 4784m. We only had a liter of water between us, and proceeded to hike for the next 3 hours: breathlessly at first, in a more relaxed fashion after 30 minutes over the well used gently upward sloping trail- but turning around at the base of the final clambering of solid rock having run out of water and lacking in confidence about our abilities to boulder at more than 15,000 feet.

Tourist Information: Ride down from the TeleferiQo

When reaching the downhill terminal, the operator queried,"¿Taxi?". We nodded assent, and he pointed to a guy who asked us to follow him. I was surprised to see a huge steel-gray Hyundai minivan instead of a yellow taxi-cab. The driver assured us that he ferried people to and from the terminal all day; the bigger vehicle was to accommodate larger groups of people and the ride would be a dollar more than the regular cab fare to pay for his return trip to the terminal. He was a friendly guy who congratulated us on our good Spanish- he said that it was a rarity to speak to someone in Spanish and be understood because many of the tourists spoke to him in English, and were surprised if he did not have a good grasp of the language. He had been driving for the more than 8 years, and after inquiring about places of origin, and the places we had visited in Ecuador, he said we needed to visit the Oriente. On hearing that we had ruled the Galapagos Island out of our trip because it was too expensive he said that we should Puerto Lopez. We could rent a boat there for a much cheaper price and visit a nearby island where we would see the same animals and vegetation that we would see in the more touristy Galapagos Island.

Final Ride to the Airport

The final taxi ride in Ecuador was a 5AM taxi ride to the airport. The one in all person who ran the hotel had booked a taxi for us in the morning. We were surprised to a shiny black brand-new KIA SUV park outside the hotel, and the taxi driver was a hip urban male with designer glasses- it felt that I was getting a ride to the airport from a friend from work. After the initial inquiries about our trip,  he proceeded to reel off the names of Ecuadorian

coastal towns that we HAD to visit on our next trip: Esmeraldas and so many others that I do not remember the names of any of them.

When we got to the airport, he did not have change for a US$20 bill, (the greenback is the currency in Ecuador now), and saw a woman who was selling chewing-gum. He talked to the woman about the baby she was carrying on her back, and the cap that keeping the cute infant's head warm. He said that we was willing to buy a dollar worth of chewing gum from her, if she could give us change for the $20 bill.  I was touched by his kindness.

The woman retrieved a wad of bills from a secret location, but then I realized that she had a different plan. She was going to sell us the chewing gum for $2.50- the driver protested that they cost less than $0.50, but the woman proceeded to hand me two packs of chewing gum, and handed me $17.50 in change. The driver was about to protest this, but I motioned to the driver with my left hand that it was OK, gave the driver his fare and the tip, and entered inside the terminal to catch my flight back to the USA.