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Published: November 28th 2007
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I am currently heading down to the very South of Ecuador, with the final destination being Vilcabamba, a small village not far from the border to Peru. My first destination was Riobamba, a city which I had visited already last year. Therefore, I did not do much sightseeing there, mainly just bought my ticket for the Devil´s Nose train ride. When I arrived at the hostel in the afternoon, they told me that it was probably too late to buy a ticket for the next day (the guidebook had said the tickets should be bought the night before or in the morning). The train only runs on Wednesdays, Fridays and Sundays, so if there was non available for the next day, it would have meant to wait for 2 days in Riobamba. However, the hostal owner did some phone calls, and finally managed to make a reservarion for meç. I just needed to go down to the train station and pick up the ticket. Whe I paid for the ticket, I was a bit surprised that it cost a lot less than what the guidebook had said...
I then went down to ProBici, the agency I had done the Chimborazo
downhill ride with last year. As Galo, the owner, had been so great in explaining millions of things and we had had a lot of fun, I just wanted to say hello to them. They have actually moved their office to across the street, as their previous landlord had tripled the rent. The entrance is now through a textiles´store. It was nice to talk to Galo again, and I think he was also happy that somebody came back a year after a trip. He gave me some useful tips about who to contact for hikes in the area. Galo then asked me whether I knew that the devil´s nose train currently didn´t go all the way down to the devil´s nose, but only as far as Alausi. So that was why the ticket had been so cheap. Through the
terremoto (earth quake) last week in Peru which had also affected parts of Ecuador part of the railway tracks on Devil's Nose have been destroyed. I was considering staying in Riobamba until Friday (when all of the tracks would be repaired), but then decided to go only to Alausi, as that part of the journey was supposed to be very pretty,
too.
I went to the train station the next morning around 6.30, and it was already full of gringos. And I met some old friends: a young German couple who I had met a couple of times at the SAEC in Quito, and then the Belgian couple, Chris and Luc, whom I knew from Mindo.
The train went through beautiful landscape; nothing really spectacular, but just countryside, paramo, indigenas working on the fields, rivers, cows, markets... I had been told before the trip that it was not possible to be on the roof of the train (where of course you would have the best views, and fresh air in addition), as they had done until recently. So I stood most of the time in the space between my wagon and the one behind, and took some good shots; it wasn’t entirely safe, as the train had some very abrupt stops and and around quite a few bends; so one had to hold on really tight to the rails with one hand, taking the photographs with the other hand - which isn’t really the best way to take shots with an SLR, but it was great fun. For the
last hour or so they unexpectedly opened the roof, and those who realized it quickly climbed up. There were even seats there and the view was spectular.
We also had a couple of stops in a few places. In one place a guy was mixing a ‘medicinal drink’: he scraped off some stuff from an Aloe, which looked in fact like salva, so not very inviting. Then he added some malt and extracts from local plants, mixed it all, shook it and then let the stringy liquid run down from a cup in his one hand held up high to the other a number of times. I tasted the drink and in fact it was a lot better than it looked.
As we came closer to Alausi the scenery became more spectacular, and there was a drop down of several hundred meters to the valley beneath us. We went for a while and then the train stopped. What had happened? Well, the carriage we were on had jumped out of its track! So would we have to walk for miles now along the railway tracks with our heavy backpacks? It looked like it. I didn’t see any way
how that heavy vehicle could be brought back on track. But of course I had no idea of the railway staff’s experience with this type of problem: they quickly brought a shovel and some iron part, worked 15 minutes, put some plants on the whole thing, the train went forward and back, and was back on track! And a little while later we reached Alausi.
Everybody left the train. As I went to the baggage car to pick up my backpack, I saw that some people were hopping onto the front part of the train where the staff had loaded a number of wooden logs. I asked one of the staff where the train was going, and he said ‘un poco mas abajo’ (a little bit further down). I thought, why not go a bit further down town and climbed up as well. We left and went through town and went on and on and on..... until I realized that we were going down Devil’s Nose! And we went down almost all the way! Until the place where indeed the
terremoto had destroyed the tracks; but it was almost at the end of the ride! We unloaded the logs
and provided them to the workers there. It had been beautiful ride down the gorge, and I was glad I had been so lucky to go on the ride. We went up again, I had lunch in Alausi and then went on to Cuenca by bus.
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sylvian ung
non-member comment
response to your travelblog/ecuador
hi, i have been trying to figure out a way to do the chiva express from quito to guay without a tour. reading online and the latest lonely planet guide didn't help much. would you give some advice on this matter? thank you.