Taxi!

There has been an increase in inflation in Argentina lately, which means a lot of prices have increased. I've noticed this in the prices of empenadas, clothing, and recently, taxi fares. It used to cost 5.10 pesos to get in the taxi during the day, and like 6 to get in a taxi between midnight and 6 am. The companies have raised their prices recently, and it now costs 10 pesos just to get in the cab during the night, and they increased the amount of time at night where it costs higher; now between 10 pm and 6 am the price is higher. The rate you pay per kilometer also went up. This has angered a lot of people, and last week there was a violent assault on a taxi driver outside of the main city. Because of this assault, the taxi drivers in Mendoza are now on strike to protest the lack of security in their jobs. They are asking for more safety measures to protect them as taxi drivers. So yesterday when I wanted to take a bus home, I couldn't, because a bunch of taxi drivers have parked their cars in the middle of the street in front of the main plaza, where is the only place I know how to take a bus home safely without getting lost. They've also parked a bunch of cars in front of the bus terminal to protest.
    Not all of them are on strike; I still took a cab home last night, and paid the extra 4 pesos or so that it normally doesn't cost. There are a few different types of cabs in Mendoza. The yellow ones are the typical cabs you can flag down on the street. Then there are Remises, which are the more sophisticated taxis, which are just normal looking cars. These are the ones my host mom always calls for me because she thinks they are safer and they won't take advantage of you by driving you around random extra streets to make you pay more.
    However, I've actually had worse taxi experiences in Remises.  Once, I got in the car with a Remise driver and I'm pretty sure he was drunk. He kept turning up the music, started singing along, was speeding in and out of traffic, then took a long swig from a coke bottle, which I'm pretty sure was not coke. At this point, we were at my stop so I left the car as quick as possible. Another time, I got in a Remise car, and the driver was just really rude to me. As I told him the name of the street, he handed me his walkie talkie thing they use to get directions, and asked me to speak my English into it so someone could translate it for him. As I responded in Spanish, he just kept doing the same thing, not knowing where to go, as I gave him directions, but he wouldn't listen to me. And when we finally arrived to where I was going, he rudely told me to pay him in Argentine pesos... as if I was going to try to pay in some other currency. Another local explained to me that because the Remises are a smaller company, they have less regulations and safety checks by the company, whereas the yellow cabs are more popular, so they have to follow stricter regulations, which keeps the drivers in check.