The Devil's Nose

Today we headed south by bus, from Riobamba where we'd spent the night, to a small town Alausi, where we had a wander before boarding the Devil's Nose Train. It had old wooden carriages like in the Butch Cassidy film. We thought we'd got the short straw as our seats were in the front of the first carriage, looking right onto the engine, but we got a good view out the side windows as we crept down the mountain. Because there was no room to do a turn on the Devil's Nose mountain, the train had to do a zigzag by pulling into a siding, then reversing out and down a new track onto the next section. It reversed into the next siding when it needed to make the next turn. This happened a few times on the way down. It used to be possible to make this trip sitting on the roof, until someone fell off and was killed.

At the bottom we had a stop to admire where we'd come. Then the carriages were put into a siding so that the engine was at the front and our carriage was now on the back, meaning we got a great view backwards on the return journey. It took about 3 hours though there was an hour at a museum and cafe where locals did dancing.

We were down at 2000m or so, but spent the rest of the day climbing up till we got to Ircapirca at 3000m, the only Inca site in Ecuador, which was only there 40 years before they were all put to death by the Spaniards.

It was a long day, and was dark by the time we got to Cuenca, our base for 2 nights.