Devil Train!!!

So our reason for going to Riobamba was to take a train called ¨El Nariz del Diablo.¨ It travels along the old trans Andean railway and has sections that are steeper than anyother railroad in the world. It´s mostly used for sightseeing by tourists these days. In order to get a good view that pack onto the roofs of the train cars, some of which have small railings, some do not.

We waited in line for tickets for almost an hour and were suprised at how many people were there, one of the hazards of doing something mentioned as amazing in a popular guidebook. The train left at 7AM the next morning. We returned to our hostel and cooked an interesting dinner of scrambled eggs and veggies from the market. I say interesting because we put soy sauce in, and it gave the whole thing a grayish color. We also used the local fresh cheese which reacts in interesting ways when cooked. After dinner we played our habitual game of Rummy (We have an ongoing game of Rummy for the duration of our trip, Katy is currently 20 points ahead out of 2000, its a very tight match.) and went to bed early. We got up at 5Am and made it to the train station by 6. The train roof was packed with bundled up gringos. We clambered up the last car with room and staked out our spot. After sitting up there for about 5 min. I realized that my feet were going to freeze off, due to wearing sandals. I had also forgotten the sunscreen and my sunglasses, It was a disheartening start to a difficult day. As the train pulled out of the station an overwhelming urge to pee came over me, not good.

I will add here that as the train moved through the countryside, I was blown away by the landscape and fascinated by my view of Ecuadorian farm fields and their irrigation techniques which are extensive. I also could no longer feel my feet and I thought my bladder was going to explode, with no bathroom in sight. I contemplated throwing myself off the train into some of the more comortable looking felds, anything to relieve myself.

Slowly, as the sun came out my feet warmed up, and my bladder filled to an overwhelming capacity. I was forced to recline (as much as possible in the sardine like conditions) and not move, every bump bringing up the possibility of wetting myself. I was teased cruelly when we stopped for a moment in a small town to let traffic pass and I thought I might be allowed off what I had begun to call it in my mind, The Devil Train. Finally at 10AM after hours of near pants peeing conditions, the train stopped in a small mountain town and I scrambled over families and children to reach the ladder first and hurl myself towards a bathroom. I threw some money at the the attendant and had a few moments of blisslike release. God, life was once again, bearable and full of hope, for now.



For the next few hours I sat on the train roof reveling in my relaxed and empty condition. The scenery grew drier and more brown as we went higher into the mountains. The irrigation canals grew smaller and their flows were mere trickles. The fields that had the luxury of water were bright green in comparision to their neighbors. As we passed into the afternoon the sun grew hotter and brighter, in direct contrast to the mornings huddled shivering.


So we eventually reached the last town on the trains itinerary. Here to our amazement, more people packed on the trains roof, for the dramatic descent down a mountainside that gave the train its name. By this time I was thouroughly sunburned and kind of over the whole thing. The next few hours passed agonizingly slowly as our train crawled down the mountainside in a series of switchbacks that required long pauses and track changes, all with much jolting of cars as we sat perched on the edge of some staggering precipices.

Finally we reached the bottom, which was at the level of the river above. There were the abandoned ruins of a church and another nameless building and the river. We got off the roof and made the decision to make the journey back up inside the baqggage cars to get out of the sun and to actually be able to move around. We crawled up into one of the cars, and reveled in the cool shade of the metal box. We met some nice people and were standing and talking to an English teacher from L.A. and watchin the scenery scroll by the car doors. All of a sudden with no warning screeches or bumps the train came to a dead halt with a really scary boom. We were thrown bodily across the car for 4 or 5 ft. and landed sprawling on our butts. An Ecuadorian family sitting on a bench screeched across half the car, their baby luckily unharmed started screeching immdiately as did the other 3 kids in the car. I was immediately sure hundreds of gringos had been thrown to their deaths, but when I peered out they were all still up there, I guess they were packed in so tight that nobody had anywhere to go. The older lady sitting on the bench expressed everybodies feelings very simply when she announced, ¨No Mas Tren¨.

We made it back to town where I promptly sat down at a cafe and had a beer. After relaxing for a few minutes we went to get on a bus back to Riobamba, ¨No mas Tren¨. Due to the flood of gringos doing the same thing, the buses were full. Luckily we know that South American buses are never full, and Katy in a flash of brilliance asked if we could stand in the aisle. The bus guy, answered very simply, ¨Porque No?¨ Why Not?. So as a crowd of angry people yelled at the ticket office we quietly boarded the last bus back to Riobamba, standing up. I got some more reading done, and that was the end of the Devil Train.