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Published: February 10th 2007
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Here’s to writing things on time!! Salud!! Our fine trip to RÃo Bamba took place on the 10th and 11th of February. With the anticipation of carnival looming, we decided to take a trip to this town to get out of Quito for a bit, you know sometimes, it’s just necessary. Due to work schedules and the need to plan the trip at the last minute (yes, it was planned Friday night at around 11:30) we left on Saturday morning at about 6:00 ready for adventure. This soon wore off as we all fell asleep on the bus.
RÃo Bamba itself is a small city where there’s not tonnes to see, but nice to go and relax a bit. We checked into our hostel and headed to the Saturday market, famous in the area. The market was teeming with pretty well anything you could want, from huge stew pots, by the looks of them didn’t need the animal to be cut up hardly at all as they were HUGE, to hammocks and loads of indigenous crafts. Since Jehanne and Emily had failed to inform me that the ride we were doing the next day was going to be COLD,
Me, Emily, & Jehanne
The three Río Bamba explorers! I had to buy something warm. I settled on a poncho. It is wonderful. I am wearing it now. Excited by our purchases, we headed to buy tickets for the train ride for the next day and after buying them, discovered that it is fun to play around on parked trains (safely of course ;-) ).
The next morning, we rose super early, doing this two days in a row does not bode well with me I must say, and headed to the train station where, to our disappointment, the train had disappeared and been replaced by two busses that had railroad-style wheels. Sighing somewhat disapprovingly, we handed in our tickets and got on top of the busses, I mean, how else does one ride a train-bus hybrid in Ecuador? I was so glad for my poncho at this time as it was very cold. Seeing your breath cold. I know it’s not Canada, but jeeze, we ARE on the equator, no?
The ride, though, was absolutely fantastic and SO beautiful. We chugged through small faming communities, cow fields, and over old roads, skirted mountains, traversed rivers, and drove down the main streets of several towns. Our feet
Having some fun
We made an entire stop action movie, this is but a preview: Jehanne and I need to get onto the train to stop it before it plummets into a ravine! were over the edge, our eyes peeled at the scenery, and our ponchos flapping in the wind. It was incredible. We were hit a few times with water from some of the locals that the train passed. Pre-Carnival funness! The Andes is such a beautiful mountain range, obviously really old and surrounded with green rolling hills. We caught glimpses of Chimborazo Volcano (6310m) every now and again, which is the highest mountain in Ecuador, highest mountain north of itself in the Americas, and the closest spot on earth to the Sun.
The railroad has now almost all been destroyed by the effects of the El Niños of the 80s 90s, but the stretch between RÃo Bamba and Sibambe is still intact. It was started in 1899 to connect Guayaquil with Quito to make the first Trans-Andean rail service. Building stopped in 1902 when it reached Sibambe as it looked impossible to complete the stretch from there to Alausà over what was aptly named the ‘Devil’s Nose’. A mighty feat of engineering, unprecedented at the time, gave rise to a series of switchbacks that was able to climb the 1000m slope, but not before claiming many of the workers’ lives.
Indiana Jones Style
Emily and I wonder if there will be lions in the next car... Going through this part was pretty cool. The conductor had to jump out and manually change the switch for the rails and we were just hoping that the brakes wouldn’t give out! So incredibly beautiful though!!
Our trip home was somewhat uneventful. We had a beer, before hitting the bus, with a Chilean guy we met on the train. He was the victim of a pre-Carnival splashing on the street but was able to dry quickly in the sun. Jehanne and I almost missed the bus, we had to run and hit the side of it for fear of it completely pulling out without us, but we were able to sleep on the way back and prepare for the next day of teaching bright and early in the morning!!
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Jehanne
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Geezzz
Salud to late blogging!? NO no no! Its about damn time you finished this mother... haha but I guess it was worth the wait my friend... it was pretty fantastic, might I tell you! You are such a beautiful writter and you are so informative!! Good job, keep it up!! Have I ever told you you should be a journalist? Well you should! Anyway you rule my world... ciao for now guapo!!