Train ride to Hell n back..

• Travelhob's Profile
• About this blog
• Entry from Riobamba

Trip Start Jun 07, 2008 Previous
Entry Trip End May 01, 2009 Next
Entry

  Riobamba, Ecuador
Thursday, June 26, 2008

Watchya watchya watchya, me again, did you expect someone else???
Ok, so Iīm backtracking a bit here as its now Tuesday 1st July, can you believe it? and I īm in another town altogether (heīs in another town altogether! anyone? no? Airplane? Police Squad?  oh well, moving on... ) So the Train ride to hell and back well whats this all about then? Well read on friend and I will reveal all. This is a biggie so hope youīre sitting comfortably...

One of the reasons for going to Riobamba was to go on this much advertised and hyped train ride from Riobamba to a place about 5 hours away called Alausi, and from there the train takes you on the, and I will quote from the book here (start the mysterious music) " hair-raising switch-backs called the Nariz del Diablo" The Devils Nose, (yes another one.. per my last entry from Banos re the waterfalls...)

5000 meters up a volcano

. (ok stop the music now) So I went to the station in Riobamba to buy my ticket on Thursday evening, as the train runs on Friday, to find out that due to a landslide on the line the train wonīt run from Riobamba and I need to take the bus to Alausi and get the train from there. Ok fair enough, bought the bus ticket and need to catch the bus at 6am Friday morning!!!  Say what ? Yup 6am, me and getting up early are not a good mix!

Ok, so another part to this saga is that the hotel I was staying is was a right hole, and not the nice kind of hole, the other kind.. It was soo noisy there with the noise from the street and the people coming and going at all hours, so my sleep there was none to sporadic at best. But it was a place where you get what you pay for I guess and I didnīt pay much so couldnīt really expect much, and I couldnīt be arsed to move to one of the other hostels and pay $10 per night, oh soo expensive!

Ok, still with me? Friday morning dawns all to suddenly. Oh yes, I had the previous night, in an attempt to get some sleep, found a cheap restaurant and had some food and consumed a number of beers, possibly more than 4 (Mat,Ped!), so as to lull myself in to unconsciousness and hopefully some form of rest.. NO 2am a load of people come back from wherever and decide they have to shout instead of talk to each other and continue for sometime, dozed off at some point..

Animals at a great height.

. 05.30 sounds the alarm, ah nuts, what am I doing this for? Oh yeah a train ride. Now, may I just interject here with a little on the reason for wanting to go on this train ride, some of you may be thinking all this just for a train ride.. Well I guess it all stems from when I was a young boy and mother and farther would buy the original Thomas the tank engine books, before it was all commercialised and taken over by Ringo Star, which my brother and I would read and weīd spend many weekends at Bluebell steam railway line in Sussex and going to steam fairs like Parham Steam rally and that kind of thing etc. So the chance to go on this ride here really, for me, was a must do. Also, I studied engineering at college many years ago, so this kind of thing interests me.   

Back once again to the story. So 5.30 alarm, get up and make as much noise as possible slam a few doors flush the toilet a few times, oopps dropped my boots on the wooden floor again - smile to myself  a lot. Hopefully woke some people up, petty yes, but satisfying none the less.. its these little victories that get you through the day.  Caught the bus ok no problem, went to Alausi which took about 2 hours and arrived at the train station ready for the Nariz Del Diablo. Purchased my ticket and went through to the platform ready the see the engine in full steam only to be confronted with this thing which one could only describe as a bus on rails

At this altitude, with my hair..?

! Oh the disappointment of it all.. Ok well the ride must still be spectacular lets go.. Now, itīs traditional for this ride that you get to ride on the roof of the īTrainī, already the roof was full,  uuggg a load of Gap-year.com adventurers had already bagged it, but no problem as its all change at the end of the line so Iīll get my go then.

Well the ride down was fairly unspectacular, this switch back thing was just a way they devised of getting the trains to run up and down the valley from Alausi to the next stop at Sibambi. As the trains can only run up and down a limited gradient you cant just go straight down the valley so it kind of skirts the valley hugging the cliff edge gradually descending then you get to a point where the "train" stops and goes in reverse on the next section gradually going again, switching to the next section via a set of points, so you go down that section to the next where the train goes forward again until you reach the bottom of the valley. Does that make any sense to anyone? Well I know what I mean, hopefully the photos may help to explain.. If you think back when they built this back in the 1800īs it was all dug by hand, so from that point of view its quite an undertaking. The only fairly hair-raising point was when we stopped on the line at the point I took the photo of the "train" and had a look at the track and saw how the rails were just about clinging to the sleepers, I could move the track with a swift kick from my boot.

Chimboraza from Parque 21 De Abril

. mmm now I see the raised hair, with that and the sheer drop on one side iīm sure its pure blind faith and luck the bus thing stays on the rails..

So all change at the bottom, my go on the roof, why not. Itīs not just hanging on the roof there is a rail thing and for $1 more you get a cushion to sit on. I had kept hearing reports that the roof riding had been stopped as someone had got knocked off not that long ago. So Iīm on the roof on the way back and not long after setting off we pass this water tower where a proper train would fill up and the filling spout only just misses our heads, no warning or out, so not at all surprising someone got had been knocked off...  The assent back to Alausi uneventful after this, but better views of the valley and surrounds than from inside the bus/train thing whatever.... On arrival back at Alausi, felt quite disappointed it was only half 9 in the morning and the "exciting" high point of the day was already over.

I took a walk about the town of Alausi, which turned out to be a really rather pleasant place indeed. Some pics here..  About half 10 got the bus back to Riobamba, feeling rather irked about this whole episode, the sleepless nights the early morning the unspectacular Train ride and the fact Iīd done anything worth looking at in Riobamba in about the first half day Iīd been there, not a very interesting place really, and a bit bored to be honest..

Cycling down Chimborazo

. 

My other reason for visiting Riobamba was because of the big volcano very close by called Chimborazo, its Ecuadorīs highest point at 6310 meters so I really wanted to go and take an excursion to the national park there. Its dormant at the moment, it last erupted 10,000 years ago. On Thursday I had spent most of the afternoon going around a few agencies to try and join any groups they had going up there, nothing much doing but on Friday after the train thing I went back to one of the companies and as luck would have it they had a French couple on a full day hiking and biking execution on Saturday which I could join. Excellent, the only other thing I waned to do from Riobamba then I could move on out of that place. Yippy!!

So 9am start on Saturday morning, not that bothered about the noise at the hotel by this time as I knew I would only be there 1 more night as I planned to leave on Sunday whatever happened so felt a lot happier and my spirits were raised.  

Saturday 28 June, without doubt the best day of my trip so far. Chimborazo volcano is just outside of Riobamba. We were driven to the volcano to the first climbers refuge which is at a height of 4800 meters

End of the journey to centre of the Earth

. We then hiked up to the second climbers refuge which is at 5000 meters, this was really hard going because the air is pretty thin at that altitude so you have to go really slowly or you get out of breath very quickly. It is quite a weird sensation, the French woman had a headache all the way up due to the altitude. Unfortunately it was a bit cloudy on this day and we couldnīt see the very top but there was snow at the second refuge point and loads more above. We stopped there for a while to catch our breath and get a few pics, then made our way back down to the first refuge. Beyond the second refuge you need proper climbing gear and should have a guide to make the assent to the top. Our guide made us some nice hot food and a cuppa hot chocolate at the refuge. Over lunch he told us about a couple of German climbers who decided to climb to the top without a guide, he was saying from the second refuge you have to start climbing at 1 in the morning to make sure you reach the summit while to snow is still hard to avoid avalanches. You stay at the refuge to also acclimatise to the altitude should be at least a night, these guys didnīt stop at the refuge and climbed on further and camped in their tent. It wasnīt until the next lot of climbers went up that anyone realised they were missing and they didnīt find their bodies until the snow melted in the spring on the other side of the mountain. There are loads of placks at the refuge for people who have lost their lives up there..

So after this sobering story, we unloaded our mountain bikes from the truck and rode back down the track on the side of the volcano

Fire in the Streets

. It was soooo wicked with all the view in front then you look back and thereīs this massive snow capped volcano behind you. We stopped at the end of the track after about 30 mins at the entrance to the national park for the volcano and loaded the bikes back on to the truck, cool 4x4 pickup, I want one. The guide then drove us around the other side of the volcano where we start the other part of the bike ride. This time a 45Km decent to a town called Ambato.

Man this was just the best, the scenery was just fantastic, and we descend from about 4500 meters to 2600 in about 3.5 hours. Although it was down hill it was really hard work because itīs just dirt roads and really bumpy so you have to concentrate on the road but it was such an experience, I loved it.. I īve put some pics on here but you just cant capture all this scenery on camera, a photo just can not do it justice, it was amazing from start to finish. We started of at quite an open flattish space at the top by the volcano and by the end we were following  a river / stream down a narrowing valley which we would keep crossing over on these little bridges. I just couldnīt fathom how we could still go down any further, at each turn the valley just kept on going further down and down. We passed through all these tiny indigenous villages on the route and at one of them there was a rodeo going on so we stopped and watched for a while

Looking down the track

. They were looking at us like we were aliens, not surprising with all the helmets and gear we had on. Our guide followed us all the way incase of any problems, like we had crashed (Andy Smith) or broken a bike as he had a spare bike on the truck they also insist you ware all the safety gear too, knee and elbow pads, helmet, waterproof trousers and a balaclava cos it was really cold cold at the top, it was really well organised and just felt like Iīd properly seen a whole other side to this country, rater than the cityīs and flashes of these little villages you see while zooming past on a bus.

When we reached Ambato we loaded the truck up again and headed back to Riobamba, totally knackered but exhilarated from such a fantastic day.  

Ok well if youīve read this far, thanks for your commitment and I hope you enjoyed. Iīm now in Cuenca, which was a 6 hour bus ride south from Riobamba on Sunday. Which in itself was another fantastic journey, this section from Quito to here has some of the highest peaks in Ecuador and it been quite simply breathtaking. On one hand it seems sad that thats all behind me now, but also exciting as to what lies ahead for me, Iīm going to spend a week here and yesterday enrolled in some Spanish lessons for 4 hours a day for a week, so hopefully that will be a boost for understanding what people are saying to me and give me a good basis on which to build further.

So, adios for now amigos...

Post your own travel photos for friends and family More Pictures

Man on horse	Open space all around	Parque 21 De Abril	Parque la Libertad
Rodeo day.	Start of 2nd part of ride	The Train	Up above the streets and houses
Up on the roof

Slideshow Print this entry Share Riobamba hotels

Previous Entry Next Entry