Panama Real Estate Investment Travel Information


Taxis in Panama

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Written by Matt Landau

Thursday, March 22 2007

“Bad people can look just like you and me” my friend Carlos said as he sucked the last droplets of mango nectar from a crumpled juice box. “See that guy right there,” pointing across the street, “he could have just killed someone. Or that lady with the stroller. She may have just robbed a bank.” It occurred to me that for people like Carlos, assuming the worst about strangers is one of life's great little pleasures. A pleasure which can transform something as boring and mundane as a taxi ride, into something dangerous and risky and rash.

I ducked into the passenger seat of an old beat-up Mitsubishi shifter car: a vehicle that the crossword puzzler in me would have described as metal scraps, for example. The so-called door handle was a screwdriver that had been wedged into a tiny metal hole, held secure with a piece of fishing line—the sort of thing that, even if you had never been in a car before, you would still think, what the f*ck is that?. The windshield was ridden with cracks that spidered outwards like skinny rays of sunlight against a dull afternoon sky. The taxi bore no resemblance to any legal automobile I had ever seen gracing a roadway. Besides the shiny hubcaps that must've been purchased or polished earlier that day, the car was pathetic. My driver, the man who was in charge of maintaining this piece of engineering magic, was an old man with a wooden stick for an arm, who I'd come to know simply as Email. (When I asked him his name, the sound that leaked out of his mouth sounded simply like the word email.)

If you're wondering why he had a wooden arm, I'll get to that in a second.

Finding a taxi in Panama is like finding a friend at a nursing home: it takes a trained eye to pick one that won't die on you. With brakes that don't work, gears that don't shift, and tires that don't tread, Panama taxis are everywhere and as long as they have a certification number on the side, they're generally safe to ride in. I will recommend that if you are a single woman, you get in the back seat and if you are a single man you get in the front: I've simply observed this as customary.

Now, sitting in the car with someone I don't know is generally strange, but when they are behind the wheel I somehow consider it OK. I'll never pick up a hitchhiker for fear that they might attack me or give me lice, yet I have absolutely no problem letting men with one arm like Email drive me around foreign cities in their battered soap boxes. Unlike Carlos, who would probably have identified Email as an impending felon, I found myself overlooking any doubt, mezmorized by the miniature nativity scene neatly arranged in his cup holder. Email knew his taxi wasn't in good shape, but he raved about the set of hubcaps he had just bought the way ugly women talk about their makeup: as if one cosmetic alteration might actually make a difference. Taxis in Panama cost around one dollar and the experience, start to finish is worth every penny of it.

Email was an older man, mid seventies I'd say. As we were passing the Hooters on Calle 50, he spoke to me of days when he was younger and could do more active things like play the drums and jump rope. He spoke of full-contact sports with a passion, but alas, ever since the accident, Email was confined to sedentary occupations. “So what happened to you?” I asked.

“I worked at supermakets,” he said. “I get stuck in a meat grinders.” I imagined this as a hobby that he partook in often, much like playing dominoes or blowing your nose. Email then tapped his arm, or what more looked like a small table leg, against the tattered steering wheel. I had to stop eating, mid-bite, the hotdog I had picked up just a few minutes back for fear that perhaps it had some Email in it. His prosthetic arm had none of the qualities you'd attribute to a human arm. It appeared more, to be the sort of limb that had been bought at a discount furniture outlet or even fashioned out of an old baseball bat by Email himself—smooth and round, yet terribly out of place. He reached over towards me as if to let me inspect and, not knowing the most appropriate way to inspect a bad prosthetic arm, I simply knocked it a few times to listen for an echo. “It's good wood” I agreed. “It's really good wood.”

But as we turned onto Avenida Balboa near The Radisson, we hit a pothole, causing one of Emails brand-spanking-new hubcaps to go running off down the street. He slammed on the breaks and pulled aside as we both dismounted and ran back after the elusive little plate: me in flip flops and Email in wood. What Email forgot to do was put the car in park, so as we're running after the hubcap desperately in one direction, the car starts lurching forward in the other. Caught in a predicament, as to which was more worth saving, the new hubcap or the car, Email blitzed for his beloved sedan just reaching it before it crashed into a teenage palm tree. I eventually caught up with the hubcap which had rolled like a possessed bunny rabbit all the way to MultiCentro and we reconvened in the middle to bask in our moment of heroism.

When we reached my office, Email and I sighed. I asked him how much I owed, and in response he shook his finger as if to say, no matt, you have earned this one. We exchanged smiles and a handshake, then with the promptness that Email and his wooden arm showed up in the first place, they were gone.

Carlos would definitely have tagged Email as a threat to society. With the wooden arm and all, I can only imagine the scenarios he might have come up with. The obvious one being that he was an undercover pirate looking to rob anyone naive enough to ride in his cab. But with Email, as with almost all the cab drivers in Panama, there's not really much to fear. Sure their cabs may be junk and maybe they don't exactly come across as superior chauffeurs, but in the end, they'll get you to your destination alive and, for the most part, unharmed.