The last few days have been full of adventures and sightseeing!

It was up and at ’em at 5:15.am on Friday, the 19th, for a day long tour with the TerraDiversa tour company.    The Devil’s Nose Train and Ingapirca tour was sure to make for a fun day getting outside Cuenca.

Due to the high rain weather forecast, the tour company contacted me the night before to arrange for an earlier pick-up time.  The tour guide rescheduled for pick up at my place of stay at 6:15am.  As it turned out he was an hour late.  He had not been informed that I was lodging in a home so he had been to several places of lodging accommodations in the immediate area in an attempt to locate me.  Thankfully, he (Luis) came driving down the street and spotted me standing on the sidewalk.  Then it was off to pick up another person across the city that was to join the tour.  The lady was not waiting at her pick-up spot as agreed upon.  The guide went looking for her in the area on foot.   Long story short, he found her splayed out on the bathroom floor in her place of stay (someone had let him in).  Who knows how long she had been unconscious.  Once conscioius, the guide suggested she seek medical care to insure she was free from injury and advised that it was in everyone’s best interest that she reschedule going on the tour at another time. So…off the tour group goes, finally! So much for an early start!!!

Our first tourist attraction of the day was to be the famous Devil’s Nose train ride out of Alausi.  The Devil’s Nose is a section of the Ecuadorian train track between the cities of Quito and Guayaquil.  The  section of the train track running between the Alausi and Sibambi stations was the one we were to take.  It is named Devil’s Nose because of the number of deaths  that occurred during it’s construction and the sheer difficulty of the construction itself.

We traveled along the Pan American highway for what was typically a three and a half hour drive to Alausi.  The highway surface quality varies from one stretch of road to another.  There were the typical cars, trucks and buses traveling along the two lane highway; making it three lanes if passing was involved.  The guide shared there were frequent land slides due to land erosion on the mountain sides.  It was obviously so as we traveled along.  A significant landslide had occurred outside Canary about three weeks prior in which seven people lost their lives.  He commented he hoped the highway was back open.  Well, the second delay of the day lay just ahead of us.  Sure enough, the highway was still closed and there was a diversion around it via country roads.  There was bumper to bumper traffic sporadically along the way and numerous stand stills for long periods of time.  It was eventually obvious we weren’t going to make the 1:00pm train we were scheduled for.  So everyone is thinking, “What a bummer!”

The mountainous countryside included beautiful fields and numerous dairies with indigenous Ecuadorian farmers working them.  We had seen off-highway scenery we would not have seen if it hadn’t been for the diversion.  There were absolutely no complaints!

The train was pulling out of the station as we pulled up in front.  Our guide took his job most serious and set about problem-solving.  Ultimately, he proposed driving the tour group to the Sibambe station (about a 40 minute drive) so we could make the return train ride to Alausi.  Each agreed and off we went.  The drive to the Sibambe station was an adventure all it’s own.  It included the equivalent of off-roading down narrow dirt roads and driving through several small villages.  At a fork in the road, the guide had to ask for further directions.  Fortunately, there was someone to ask!  As we neared the Sibambe train station it was noticed there were partial remnants of the train track rails from over a hundred years ago.  Our Ecuadorian tour guide was like a kid in a candy store as these were discovered.  He commented we were seeing something that few have seen in many a year with the exception of the few indigenous of the immediate area.  So…we stopped for photos to mark this momentous occasion.  It was a thrill to see our tour guide so ecstatic.

Believe it or not, our tour group almost missed the train…”again”.  While it was nice to ride the train and experience the infamous zigzag track along an almost perpendicular mountain face, the adventures of day and the scenery taken in prior to the train ride was much more impressive.

As if that wasn’t enough, this was only the first of two attractions for the day.

I’ll save sharing about the second attraction for another post.