Chugging along the Nariz del Diablo

Much had been made of the Nariz del Diablo... that is, riding on the roof of a train from Riobamba down to Alausi, along the treacherous route of The Devil's Nose.

In front of the Nariz del Diablo

Me and a good thirty people lined up for a few hours to wrestle a ticket from the frazzled employee in the train station.  What made the purchase even more stressful was the fact that the train had not run the two other times it was scheduled to make the trip earlier that week, as the employees hadn't been paid for the past few months, and had rightly decided to go on strike.  They'd let the train go through the day I had been planning to make the trip, but after that, they would go on strike again indefinitely.

Our 'conductor' takes a break

As we pulled out of the station at around 7am on Sunday morning, I couldn't help but feel a little disappointed.  We wouldn't be riding on the roof of the train... a couple of foolish gringos had decided to stand up as the train went under a bridge a few months earlier and had been killed, so that was now out of the question.  Also, we weren't exactly on a train... it was really just another coach bus, fitted to ride on the rails, and the 'conductors' wore the stereotypical hats.

At the end of the day, I was glad to have weasled my way onto the 'train'... but at the end of a day, once a bus, always a bus, and at this point it takes more than a winding road to get me worked up.

Our 'train'