Cuba's Coco taxis

江西 侯昌玮

While in Cuba, we had to take a ride on a home-grown peculiar vehicle known as a Coco taxi. Coco taxi are named this as they look like half a coconut. These little three-wheelers are quite popular in tourist towns. Their colors are similar, and their body shells are fiberglass (玻璃纤维) with a drive train (传动系统). They are varied a bit with either two or three seats behind the driver as well as details like wheels and mirrors, but the body shells appeared to be all the same from what we saw.

Travelers are generally not recommended to travel in these Coco taxis due to their poor safety record. The hard seats are not very comfortable and the ride is bumpy(颠簸的).The engine is a rather noisy unit which seems to indicate 50 km/h is the maximum speed.

These Coco taxis apparently originated in Havana when the tourist trade was re-launched in the 1990s. Yellow was to indicate that it was for use by tourists,while black or blue was for locals only.We only saw the yellow ones as I suspect there is no local only designation anymore with recent governmental reforms.

Despite it being rather loud, we enjoyed our ride in a Coco taxi as it was an almost convertible car or motorcycle,feeling like being out in the wind. I was glad to sample a locally produced Cuban automotive product as well as we missed out on the locally produced Giron buses.

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Why are travelers generally not recommended to travel in Coco taxis?