Today was amusing and a little scary in equal measures. We had planned on going to a local market and look at the stalls. Most Mexican markets are pretty tourist-y, this one was only 3 miles away. It sells leather goods, toys, phones, you can even get a PC serviced My Brother knows a reasonable amount of Spanish (after all he married a Mexican last week and they'd known each other for many years before), the the plan was to head down being that he had visited this market before.
However the taxi driver seemed to have other plans.
The rules of taxis in Mexico are this: NEVER get into an unsignposted "taxi". NEVER get into any "taxi" that doesn't have the official documentation and photos displayed in the window. And NEVER get into one where there is no meter or it is obscured.
We followed all of these rules and yet it became clear within 10 minutes that we were not heading where we had asked. My Brother double checked "You do know where this market is?"
"Yes?"
"We should have been there by now.... are you sure?"
The taxi driver shifted in his chair several times. He looked at me in the wing mirror, then he looked back over at my Brother. "Yes I know where it is... nearly there.."
Another 10 minutes. A meter that should have said $18 mex started edging towards $30. I could visibly see that my Brother was starting to get angry. Seeing a mall in the distance he said "Pull over there!" We got out. It cost us nearly $50. As we walked away from the taxi my Brother said "..fucking taxis, ripping us off, he KNEW where he was going, he just wanted to make some easy money..."
The taxis here are cheap. However one or two seem to work a little underhand, trying to push the boundaries of acceptable behaviour. A few tourists get caught out and probably chose the Metro or the buses instead. Its sad situation as Mexico City is both vibrant and interesting, anything that smooths the way for tourism brings in money.
The mall we were dropped at really made us think. Every single shop either had things on sale and were charging a small fortune for (yes, even in Mexico), or simply weren't tagged meaning that they were rather expensive. We were nervously followed around a couple of shops by staff who realised that we were not of "old money". One shop had display of cowboy boots, but with crystals embedded. When I pointed at it the staff member behind us winced.
Eventually my Sister-In-Law: my Brother's wife came and rescued us. She knows the buses and streets far better than us so we ended up bus-hopping until we finally arrived there. My Brother's friend joked that it wasn't quite a kidnapping but close enough. We had been kidnapped-lite, the diet coke of kidnapping.
Lastly, when were walking around the market I had to stop to let some people come through the other way in the narrow aisles. As I did so I felt something soft and round catch into my hand. I instinctively apologised turning around,thinking I had caught someone's bag, but as I looked down I realised that I was inadvertently cupping a Policeman's balls. He seemed remarkably unworried and walked away.
