Sweaty thigh rubs sweaty thigh rubs sweaty thigh. Bodies pitch and heave in sync. Arm wrapped around stranger begins to grow tingly with numbness. Smells of six bodies crammed together stifle the already-stale air.
Elbow jabs my ribs.
No, I’m not describing an awkward orgy. I’m describing the typical experience of riding in a grand taxi.
In the United States, you call or flag down a taxi, tell the driver your destination, spread out in the bucket backseat, pay the fare and tip the driver. Taking a taxi in Morocco is a much different experience.
First, you need to figure out which taxi to take. The more expensive petit taxi, which is identifiable by its cobalt blue color (in Rabat—each city has a different color taxi), is similar to what we consider a traditional taxi. You can flag one off the street or at a major taxi station. Unlike a traditional taxi, the driver may stop and pick up multiple people during the journey, sometimes taking detours to drop-off those whose destinations are on the way. These extra people often hand the driver a 5 dirham coin, but you still end up paying the full fare at the end of the ride. Taking advantage of a non-Arabic-speaking tourist or a cultural rule I just don’t understand?
The petit taxis, however, must remain in city limits. To travel from one city to another, which is often necessary for commuters, you must take a grand taxi. The grand taxis are sun-baked white Mercedes sedans that look like they may or may not break down at any moment. I had to take one of these grand taxis every morning for a week, in order to get to my teaching project in Sale, fingers crossed.
Taking a grand taxi is not so simple. Typically, each grand taxi is assigned a specific destination. Therefore, you need to know the name of the neighborhood in which your destination is located. When you get to the grand taxi station, you will hear a chorus of men yelling various destinations. Rather than navigate the lot on your own, ask someone—he will lead you to right driver. Now that you’ve found a taxi, be prepared to play the waiting game. A grand taxi will not leave the station until all six “seats” (four in the back and two in the passenger seat) are purchased. However, the wait is not often long since the loudest guy with the clipboard is carefully tracking how many people are needed in each car. In the rare case that no other passengers can be found, the remaining passengers must pay for the empty seat(s).
Miraculously, all six passengers plus the driver manage to squeeze in. (Tip: if you are travelling with a friend, try to grab the passenger seat to split. That way, you’re not sandwiched between other strangers.) Seatbelts are pointless at this point, so brace yourself as best you can while the driver starts and stops abruptly on roads with questionable signage and traffic that does not file neatly into separate lanes.
Finally you arrive, slide off the sticky seats and nearly collapse on the leg that has fallen asleep during the drive. Don’t forget to pay the driver. From Rabat to Sale, the fixed fare is 5 dirhams (or $1.36). Then, weeks or months later, you return home to the States and find yourself paying the Uber driver $35+tip to get across town, and suddenly the foreign grand taxi seems so much more appealing.