The Devils Nose Train.
The Devils Nose train ride is a very famous journey that goes from Riobamba to Aluasi where just beyond it takes an extra little journey out and descends the Devils Nose mountian which it does by a series of switch backs! Very exciting, although the most exciting bit about it is that you can ride on the roof of the train, at least you used to be able to!!
Health and safety has arrived in Ecuador and ruined our plans of riding on the top!
There is one carriage that has seats on the roof but no-one was even allowed on that, I opted for the space between the carriages as that was as close to the roof as I was gonna be able to get!
The journey begins at 7am and is due to take about 5 or 6 hours in total!
Along the journey.
Well an hour out of Riobabama I´m standing between the carriages when the train swings first to one side then the other and finally grinds to a halt, the carriages had come off of the track!!!!!!!!!!
I had heard about it happening but thought that, that fact belonged in the same box as riding on the roof and no longer happened!
It was really amusing, I had no idea how on earth they were ever gonna get it back on the tracks but after about another hour and a lot of brute force they managed it, I´m still amazed by it all! Unfortunatley though another half hour down the track it happened again!
Digging the train out of the ground and back on its tracks!
When we arrived at the Devils Nose mountain we began the switch backs in order to get to the bottom, it really is an engineering amazment (Mick, this train ride you would love!).
The Devils Nose mountain.
There was some amazing scenary along the way as well as some amazing sights, I saw both sheep and pigs (alive) on the roof of buses on different occasions, unfortunately I didn´t manage to get any pics of those!
A great train trip out though which was a lot of fun with the derailing etc!
Then it was back to Alusai for the bus to Cuenca.
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