" It is a wild topography. The land swoons away, rent to its very bowels. Rills, ice cold, burst out of nowhere, leap over the treeless paramo, and plunge down the rock-hard cordilleras to the hotlands below."

The dark streets of Riobamba were not quite empty in the pre-dawn hours, as women bearing loads for market and tourists bearing backpacks scurried toward the train station to catch the 6:00 AM for Guayaquil. Once I was ensconced in the Primero Classe car, and the distant engine gave a long and a short whistle of warning, it didn't seem so bad to be up early. After all, I'd had a good five hours of sleep at the Hotel El Troje, eschewing the Hawaiian dance program that began after dinner. And while six o'clock in the morning is no time to start work (those of you who know me can attest to this), the motivation was strong to ride the endangered railways of Ecuador down one of the most famous spurs in South America, El Nariz del Diablo.

When the railroads came to Ecuador at the end of the nineteenth century, they were intended to provide the first reliable access from the coast the mountains, and back again. The modern age would come to this historic country, and the wealth of its highlands would find its way out in return. But it was acknowledged that such a railway would be among the most difficult in the world, and an American team of engineers and technicians was engaged to advise the Guayaquil and Quito Railway Company.

Construction began in 1899, and all went as well as could be expected as the line followed the old Inca Highway from the lowlands toward the high inter-Andean valley. But then the line reached a nearly perpendicular wall of rock in a narrow canyon, an obstacle known as El Nariz del Diablo -- the Devil's Nose. Between the town of Sibambe and Alausi, the pitch of the landscape appeared impossible, and it seemed as even the clever norteamericanos would be defeated. Then a novel approach was taken: instead of violating the laws of mechanics and gravity by impossible switchbacks, why not rise by a to-and-from series of switchbacks? In other words, as the train climbed, it would extend past a fork in the track, linemen would switch the tracks, and the train would then back up to climb to the next switchback. Repeating the procedure, the train would complete its climb going forward again to the town of Alausi, at the top of the Devil's Nose. In 1902, the link from the lowlands to Alausi was achieved, and Riobaba was reached in 1905.

The thought of trains making switchbacks was a bit hard to visualize, especially on an insufficient 5:15 breakfast, huddled in a thin windbreaker in an unheated rail car. As daylight filled the landscape beyond Riobamba, and the pitched thatch roofs of small farms materialized along the railway, we could see that the families that worked these green fields were waking up too, drinking coffee from metal cups or putting out the corncobs for the stock. The women were in traditional red shawls, the men in more modern shirts and trousers, but all wore in the shaped felt hats so prevalent in Ecuador's high country.

The cloud cover that prevented us from seeing the volcanoes of the Andes the day before was still in place, but as we shook and rattled toward the continental divide, the scenery we could see was quite enough. Near Cajabamba, at 10,500 feet (3160 meters), the landscape was crowned by vast shallow lakes, where egrets waded and ducks dove; just beyond it we reached our first stop, in the town of Guamote.

Local boys bearing baskets of gum, candy bars, cigarettes and mints hopped aboard, while women tended more permanent stands of stewing beef and pork cracklings on the landing. I got off and walked up the length of the train; the backpack set was for the most part riding the roofs, and a community of sorts had sprung up. Climbing up the vertical metal ladder, I found an eclectic assortment of Europeans and North Americans, some dressed in new all-weather anoraks on holiday after graduation, and some clearly in it for the endless round-the-world on $5 a-day-or-less travail.

I made friends with French mountaineering guide, David Ravanel, and his partner Delphine Gimet, who had come to Ecuador to climb all the famous peaks. They had been frustrated by the weather; only Tungurahua outside of Banos, at just over 5000 meters, had felt their boots on its summit. So they had decided to take this train ride -- they hoped to catch some exposure somehow. We practiced our languages on each other: "Quando je parle francaise en Ecuador, il est simple to become muy confusio" -- but when the train again started to move the rhymic roar of its engines thankfully put an end to our dialog.

We began our descent, and the canyons closed in on small streams coursing in zigs and zags between walls of verdant profusion. At about 10 AM we reached Alausi, little more than a village clinging to a sheer landscape. A sense of anticipation filled the air; passengers who had heretofore been settled inside now ventured onto the roofs, bracing and clinging to the metal walkway that ran the length of the cars. It was clear this train had become primarily a tourist attraction: the floods of El Nino in 1983 had washed out the famous switchbacks, and in the years it took to repair the line the local people had made other means of transporting themselves and their goods a habit. Whether or not the line will continue past the next flooding is anybody's guess -- as everywhere in the world, the railways have become little more than a historical curiosity.

With a shudder and a hiss -- and a long, bimodal phrase coaxed from the whistle by the enthusiastic engineer -- the train began its descent. Riding atop the frontmost car, the hot breath of the engine blew back in my face, and I pulled off the windbreaker I had worn since dawn. Metal wheels screeched and squealed as the train pitched left, then right, at speeds that seemed quite a bit more than safe; the tracks bent and twisted in near-hairpins down the sheer canyon. Looking back, the far end of the train seemed to be above my head -- our angle of descent must have approached 10 percent, 10 meters every kilometer. This did not seem safe.

But being a bit of a fool, I stood up to take pictures, and David did the same. A line of clouds from the highlands rose higher above us, and the earth opened up in a deep gorge, halfway down which we could see the tracks we would soon be riding. It didn't seem as if any "switchbacks" would be necessary -- the angle of decline and the pitch and yaw of the tracks was so radical, and our descent so rapid, further mechanical marvels didn't seem necessary. But soon enough it came: the train slowed, and a parallel track appeared next to us, on the down-mountain side; we advanced slowly forward until I could see the tracks die in a landslide ahead of us; then the engine threw the train into reverse, and we began to back down the mountain.

As we approached the second switchback, when the train would again right itself for the descent to Sibambe and beyond, Delphine stood up and spread her arms in celebration. A feeling of accomplishment took hold, and there was time and awareness to absorb the sensory pleasures once again. Silvery agave cactus clung to the seeping walls, pampas grass gave way to bamboo, pine to acacia, and the air slowly thickened with the scents of the lowlands. A small Andean falcon burst from beneath a wooden bridge as the engine rolled noisily over it, and I followed the darting rust of his back as he rose higher, until his white wings spread in a soar above the train as he surveyed this enormous irritant.

In 1908 the railway finally entered Quito, and parades of celebration welcomed the new age of modern transport. Within a few decades the Panamerican Highway had largely supplanted that era with a still more modern one, and the engineering accomplishment of the Devil's Nose become a novelty, not a miracle. By 11:30 we ourselves had abandoned the train at Chanchan to catch a van back up the canyon, returning to the inter-Andean valley to continue our journey to Cuenca.

-- Christian Kallen

 

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