My first time in Colombia, I tried to hail a taxi but inadvertently summoned a nearby motorcycle taxi who pulled up next to me and handed over the extra helmet suggesting I jump on. To someone not familiar with Colombia, this was a strange position to be in: the land of rebels, kidnapping, and drug cartels, and here’s some stranger on a motorcycle telling me to get on. I rejected the opportunity in favor of waiting for a…more traditional and official form of transportation to come along.

I grew up in Princeton, New Jersey, a small academic town with the personality of a Joan Rivers. It’s not that the town was arrogant as much as it was isolated, a feature in turn that had a way of coming off as superior. “Oh you’re from Princeton,” people would say, rolling their eyes as if you mentioned you owned a sixty-foot yacht.

It was living in Princeton that you rarely saw a taxi and accordingly grew to doubt them. There were usually several lined up by the train station but more often than not, people chose to walk home. And while I knew of a dispatchers office, that was way out in Hamilton where it was acceptable to stand on your lawn without a shirt. There was no standing on the side of the street and hailing down a taxi in Princeton. People who did that were either tourists or they didn’t have enough money for a car.

I remember one time my mother called home saying her Saab had broken down at the mall. She theorized having a friend pick her up then perhaps waiting until my dad got home. “Or maybe I’ll just take a cab,” she said.

“What?”
“No!”
“Why would you do that?”
“What are you thinking?”

My brother and I freaked as if mom had considered hitching a ride on a garbage truck. Taxis were just not what respectable people used in Princeton. If it came down to taking a taxi or instead camping out in the mall until her car was fixed the next day, we preferred our mother find the nearest sporting good store and look for a reasonably sized tent. 

In Colombia, taxis are as everyday as the hot Caribbean sun. As I would learn, there’s the traditional taxi – the car with driver and seatbelt – and there’s the non-traditional taxi – the motorcycle driver offering up several inches of seating behind his ass. The former is pretty similar to elsewhere in Central/Latin America. Fares range from $1-$4 generally in the cities though meters are quite uncommon. A surprising amount of these government-regulated cars run on gas (which I find interesting): cheaper than gasoline and a hell of a lot cooler to fill up at the station.

The latter, the moto-taxis, scream third world anarchy. You can see them buzzing around Colombia: in between traffic, up on sidewalks. I even saw one moto-taxista driving through a church courtyard to beat the rush hour traffic. They offer cheaper fares than normal taxis, and significantly more hazardous riding conditions. It seems, to be recognized as a moto-taxista in Colombia, you need merely have a bike with two wheels and an extra helmet. They drive with the cautiousness of a drunken hobo, the plus side being that if you do get to your destination alive, you’ve done so in record time.