December 17th-18th, 2021
While at the flight park in the summer, I saw a few YouTube
videos of some amazing train rides in Ecuador.
I like trains. It’s too bad that
passenger trains in Canada just aren’t a thing…too big of a country with not enough
people to support it. Ecuador built a
railroad from the capital Quito to the largest city Guayaquil. The most challenging bit was near Alausi where
the railroad needed to do a 500 meter vertical climb (or descent, depending on
which way you are going) in a short length.
There is a big rocky promontory called the Devil’s Nose. Supposedly over 3000 workers, primarily Jamaican
slaves, died in the construction of this short leg of the track.
Before arriving in Alausi, a town of 5500 people, I researched
online about the train and some blogs and websites had links to book tickets
online but the website didn’t exist. Oh
well, I’ll book it when I get there. However,
a guy at the front desk of my hostel told me that the trains haven’t been
running for months. Shit. Well, I’ve already got a place booked, and if
nothing else, I’ll have a bit of chill time in Alausi.
It was a 3-4 hour bus ride from Baños to Alausi and I had to change buses in Riobamba. I thought it was a bit odd in Riobamba that I bought my ticket and was told by the lady to be at the ticket booth in the terminal at noon, when the bus was supposed to leave versus being at some bay. At noon, a bus conductor came up and asked me where I was going and told me to go out to the bus. I motioned that I didn’t know where to go so he told me to wait there. A minute later we were running out of the terminal, across the parking lot towards a bus that was slowly moving out onto the street. Great. Let’s do a 50 meter sprint with a 55 pound big ass backpack!
The lush countryside:
First sighting of Alausi:
Low clouds hung over Alausi and it was only a 4-5 block walk
from downtown to my hotel, El Chaporen. On
checking in, it was confirmed that the train has not been functioning since
Covid hit. Oh well, these things happen
when travelling, especially during a pandemic.
I ventured out to find some lunch and it was tough to find a
decent looking restaurant. I settled on
a place on the main street where there were only a couple of other people
eating (granted it was 3:30 in the afternoon).
The waitress, an older woman in her late 60s, came over to my table and
I asked for a menu in Spanish. No
menu. Hmm. She offered soup. Sounds good but then I couldn’t understand my
options. A guy eating at a nearby table
helped out with the translation. The soup
arrived, and it was okay. I didn’t know
what some of the vegetables were in it and the beef was hacked up with bit of
bones I had to be wary of. There was
also a small chunk of corn, like an 1/8th of a corn on the cob. I really wasn’t sure how I was supposed to
eat that with a spoon so I occasionally picked it out of the soup with my
fingers to take a bite. I wasn’t even
finished my soup, which I thought was going to be the perfect amount of food,
when she brought out a plate with rice, chicken, plantains, tomatoes and onions. Whoa.
I didn’t need that. Oh, the joys
of things getting lost in translation.
The next day I thought I’d try walking along the train tracks
to see if I could get to the Devil’s nose.
First, I stopped by the statue of Jesus on a small hill on the edge of
town. Yet another Christian statue in
this country…I have seen quite a few!
I loved the sign for the statue...
When I got to the train track, a sign should that you weren’t
supposed to walk along it. I disregarded
it as I knew that there were no trains running but I only made it about 50
meters along it and the combination of a dog in a nearby yard barking at me and
the pain of walking on the railroad ties which never match one’s gait, I
decided to turn around. The weather
forecast also showed rain coming within the hour. So I ventured back to the main street and
looked for a taxi, perhaps that’s how I can go and see it. Eventually I found one but the guy said it
would be $30 and would take an hour to get there and another to get back. What?!?
According to the map it looked to be less than 10 kilometres away. I told him I’d think about it. I got confirmation about this information by
a local guy who started chatting to me on a nearby street corner. He claimed to be a poet and when he heard I
was from Canada, he began to reel off a bunch of Canadian city names…I dunno,
to demonstrate his intelligence or something.
He confirmed that it was a couple of hours to drive to the Devil’s Nose
which I still found odd, but I decided I was defeated and returned to my room
for a chill night.
Oh well, you can’t win them all. The next morning I hopped on a bus to head to Guayaquil where I would spend one night before heading to a surf town on the coast called Montanita.
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