This comes with a little bit of bias because I have an ongoing feud with taxi drivers around the world, but the taxi drivers exploit the shit out of you at night here. In the daytime, they all use meters and it costs like $2 to go anywhere in the city. It's super cheap to get around. However, at night they turn the meters off and that same $2 trip costs $7-10. And if you try to negotiate with them on price before you get in the cab (which you should always do), they'll just tell you to find another cab. This drives me crazy as a businessman because I'm looking at a long line of empty taxis whose drivers would rather sit there all night with no passengers than take me a few kilometers away for $3 instead of $7 during a time of day with no traffic. If I were a taxi driver, my main priority would be to remain in motion and have a paying customer in my cab at all times, but they don't see it that way. I walked most places anyway, so this didn't turn out to be a huge deal for me but there were many times at night when I'd be coming home from across town and would get quoted some astronomical price for a cab ride so I'd just walk or jog home a few kilometers instead (so long as it felt safe). Towards the end of my stay in Quito, I learned about an app called Cabify which is popular down there, which is like an Uber but for taxis instead. The app determines the rates based on your distance and time of day, and it was always cheaper to use the app at night than personally flag down a taxi. The taxi drivers who were part of Cabify had to abide by their pricing structure and rules or they wouldn't be able to drive for them anymore. Even after I learned about the app though, I barely ever used it and just walked everywhere.