Taxistas

Most of the guidebooks say to be careful of getting ripped off in cabs, check any change carefully as they are quite known for fiddling tourists especially. My experience has been quite different so far - thrice the taxista rounded down the fare and another time I got handed back my tip! Extraodinary.

On the whole the taxis (the usual road offender) and the traffic generally are really quite well behaved in the city. Considering my barrio os fairly tranquil these two combined make it a really pleasant city to walk around. My biggest fear I have regularly is that I am going to drop my keys down the lift-shaft.

Actually, I should correct that to the cars only, buses drive like maniacs. The other day I had to cross the well photographed Avenida 9 de Julio, the widest highway in the world (or some such similar claim). Yes indeed, this road actually has pedestrian crossings. I did wait until I had seen someone else do it before I had the guts (and belief that this feat was in fact possible) to do it myself. The particular place I chose to cross was at a point where the road is flanked either side by other smaller roads, meaning that essentially I was crossing over 3 motorways (20 lanes) of traffic. Woof.