One of our adventures in Haifa yesterday was putting ourselves at the mercy of the city’s taxi service, since we had decided to strike out on our own rather than taking the group tour.
I’m an Uber guy at home. I like to know in advance what I’m paying, and the question of money never comes up with the driver. Taxis in Athens were a pleasant surprise, as the drivers were extremely friendly and the fares were very cheap.
I neglected to ask before getting into the taxi at the port at Haifa how much the ride to the tour meeting point at the Baha’i World Centre was going to cost. I only had a $20 bill on me; I hadn’t had a chance to get to an ATM. A ride of that distance in Athens would have been less than 10 Euros. After all, we could see the place from the port! When we arrived, the driver said, “Twenty dollars.” A bit of a surprise, but at least I could cover it.
When it came time to take a cab back to the port from the midway point of the Baha’i gardens, we went to the taxi stand and asked the man who appeared to be in charge what the fare would be. “I’ll leave that to you and the driver to negotiate.”
Uh oh.
The driver asked how much I had paid to come here. I lied, “Five dollars.” He looked at me like I was crazy. He asked the manager if he had heard me right. The driver lied, “That’s only 15 shekels!” (It would have been 20 shekels.) We went back and forth with me saying I didn’t have cash on me. Finally I relented that if we could stop at an ATM, I might be able to do a little better than that. We got in the cab.
Mistake.
We stopped at a nearby ATM. I withdrew 100 shekels, which was the minimum amount the machine would dispense.
Jane insisted that the driver turn on the meter. He pretended not to hear her. She repeated and finally he touched a button on the meter. It never moved off zero for the ride to the port.
When we arrived five minutes later, he pushed a button and suddenly the number 85.00 appeared on the meter. Okay, I could cover that. But doing the math in my head, I knew that this was already more than we’d paid to go nearly twice as far that morning.
I gave the driver the 100 shekel note. He gave me two 5 shekel coins as change. So he was even going to make that hard.
Moral: I need to brush up on my haggling skills if I’m going to survive as a tourist in this part of the world!