As I climbed through the one usable door and into the worse-for-wear backseat of the ramshackle white VW beetle, I wasn’t completely sure I was doing the safest thing.
It wasn’t.
But these beat-up, no-working-seat-belted VWs were the officially taxis of Taxco, and we were desperate to get to the top of the mountainside town to see the famous Christ statue.
This was the only way to get there in the short time we had.
So, we hopped into the death-on-wheels taxis and off we went: Flying up the slim cobblestone streets, narrowly dodging pedestrians (and other VW taxis travelling in the opposite direction).
I went to grab for my seat belt at my sternum in a motion of safety and anxiety a fair few time, only to remember I didn’t have one.
At least five times during the journey, we almost hit another taxi at a fast speed coming around a blind corner.
Apparently braking before a corner, like seat belts, is not a thing in Taxco.
But, we survived, made it to out picturesque destination, and made it safely back to our hotel – and that taxi ride will go down in my books as one of the most fun (in hindsight, as we didn’t die) journeys of my life.
And if there’s one thing you can say about Taxco, it’s that it has amazing views – whether you’re looking from the bottom of the mountain or the top, you’ll get a spectacular view of a gorgeous orange and yellow stone city.
This, in fact, was the view from our hotel room:
Beautiful, no?
I think it was the beauty of this view that let me sleep that night after a whole lot of ghost stories were swapped among our group.
Why do people like to tell scary stories at night, in unknown locations? It’s very unnerving.
But, our hotel was, we were informed by our tour guide, extremely haunted – hence the then-long conversation about hauntings that took place.
We were told of many ghost sightings, mostly in the middle of the night when one would wake up suddenly to find someone at the end of the bed staring at them.
One story we heard was of a particularly unfortunate girl who apparently woke up in the middle of the night and couldn’t move – was completely paralysed for 15 minutes while feeling an ice-cold air encircle her.
Another woke up to find the shower had been turned on.
Our group was so spooked, but luckily nothing happened the night we stayed there.
And, although scared I wouldn’t be able to sleep out of fear, I was asleep almost as soon as my head hit the pillow (I’ll blame my obsession with – the best ever – TV show Supernatural) for my nonchalance.