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Sunday, November 30, 2003

The Devil's Nose

... is the odd name of Ecuador's most famous section of railway. Just a few decades ago, the country had a trans-Andean railway that stretched from lowlands of the south up to Quito in the north and beyond. Years of neglect and El Niño storms have put paid to most of it, however, and only short lengths remain. Indeed, the only trains still running are largely for tourists, and priced accordingly.

The Nariz del Diablo was internationally famous when it was constructed - the engineers constructing the line from south to north ran into a problem just before the town of Alausí: a huge mountain in the way! Their solution was to construct a series of switchbacks up the sheer cliff face, and they still survive today.

Gringos (and a couple of Ecuadorian tourists too) pay $11 for a return ticket. The train leaves Riobamba at 0700, heads south and arrives for the first time in Alausí at about 1130, continues southwards down the Devil's Nose switchbacks. When it reaches the bottom, after about an hour, the train turns round, goes back up and terminates in Alausi.

So we bought our tickets the day before, and turned up at 0645 on Friday morning (the train only runs three days a week). An Intercity 225 it is not: the rolling stock is probably twice as old as us, at least, and the engine is a noisy old diesel thing that trundles along belching out fumes.

And it was rather lucky that it did only trundle: we were sitting on the roof! With scant regard for personal safety, most of the passengers elect to sit up on the roof of the cars, rather than inside them. It's all a bit precarious - there's not really anything to hold on to, just a low bar welded to the roof to rest your feet against; you sit in the middle facing outwards. If you're brave you can stand up, but you have to keep an eye out to duck the electricity wires that the train occassionally runs under.

Katherine wasn't sure - given her recent record of falling off things :( - but in the end I convinced her, and she spent the rest of the journey holding on to me! The stretch from Riobamba to Alausí is uneventful, but the scenery - all volcanoes and picturesque Andean hamlets - is spectacular. In the style of the Railway Children, Ecuadorean kids wave at the passing train. They seem to expect people to lob sweets at them - some do, but Katherine and I don't think that that's really a great idea (apparently it encourages begging) so we ate all ours ourselves :).

The train winds its way through valleys and over bridges, passengers clinging on all the way, passing indigenous farmsteads with tiny plots of land, until it reaches Alausí. The railway line runs right through the streets of the town, stops for a break at the station, and then lurches away once more to traverse the Devil's Nose. (The track is in pretty rotten condition - at one point we had to stop for engineers to repair a bit of it).

The switchbacks were great fun. The train moves forward into the first one, engineers leap out and change the points, and then reverses downhill onto the new track. The process is then repeated in reverse. Eventually the train reaches the bottom, facing forwards, where it stops, and after a bit of shunting and clanking the engine reattaches itself onto the other end of the carriages and sets off back up the same way it came.

We were on the 'wrong' side on the way down - facing the mountain side rather than the drop - so we switched sides for the way back up. I leant over precariously to take some exciting photos, but Katherine kept shouting at me so I had to sit still. We arrived back in Alausí about two hours later, where we disembarked (or rather, climbed down :).

I know it sounds daft, catching a train that goes nowhere, then turns round and comes back, but Alausí is a convenient place to stop on our route southwards. We didn't stay long, but caught a bus from there to Cuenca. After a four hour journey we arrived in Cuenca at about six o'clock, walked into town and got ourselves a room at the well-recommended (and cheap :) Hotel Pichincha.

Well, I've never sat on the roof of a train before (wait a minute - I've thought of a way of solving Railtrack's - or whatever it's called now - woes...), much less been onboard as it traverses switchbacks up and down a mountain. It's totally touristy, of course, but a great laugh nevertheless.

I took lots of crazy photos - too many, as usual - and I'll try and get them on-line when I can.

Now, here's Katherine to tell you all about Cuenca and Ingapirca.

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