Leaving Baños, I headed south a couple of hours to Riobamba with the intent of riding on the famous steam train up to Devil’s Nose, an extremely steep incline (5½ % grade via a series of switchbacks) that required one of the world’s greatest feats of engineering. From the publicity: “The route was known as the ‘most difficult railway in the world’ when it was built between 1860 and 1874. The ride takes you through every climate zone in the land, starting in the cool highlands, going through the cloud forest, and ending in the hot coastal jungle. The train remarkably descends caboose first and mounts the cliffs by means of switchbacks with thrilling twists and turns, offering spectacular views of Chimborazo volcano.” As if that weren’t enough, one would typically choose to ride on the roof of the train for the most thrilling ride possible. Unfortunately this is now prohibited, ever since a couple of tourists got beheaded by a low-hanging cable in 2007. [Can you imagine sitting next to the beheadees? Gross.] Damn authorities, taking all the fun out of things.
The train only runs three days a week but apparently due to recent flooding damaging the tracks, the real steam train isn’t running at all. When this happens they replace it with an “autoferro”, basically a bus that rides on the rails. I don’t understand how the autoferro can ride on the rails if the train can’t, but there you go. So it wasn’t going to be nearly as thrilling, but arriving on Thursday, I bought my ticket for Friday’s departure at 7am. Woke up at 6 (quite an engineering feat in itself) to god-awful freezing pouring rain and zero visibility. Screw it I thought, I’m going back to bed and taking Sunday’s train instead. Naturally when I went to swap out my ticket, Sunday was already completely booked. So it looks like I’m missing one of the highlights of Ecuador, drat.
Instead I hung out with some local Couchsurfers and relatives of the sisters I met in Baños who live here. Always nice to meet locals, but nothing particularly special to write about. Oh, but I danced – to music that this gringo has zero claims to – cumbia, salsa, merengue, samba. Rather than butchering the actual steps, I invented new steps that I’m sure will catch on any day now.
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