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- Subscribe - Contact Us - Rate Card - Place an Ad Archives Revels Classifieds Real Estate Menu Guide Wedding Weather Subscribe Contact Us Read Jen's previous entry about her Ecuador experience ... click here . December 12, 2005 From Ecuador: the harrowing train derailment More of the misadventures of a Tidings reporter on vacation Jennifer Squires So I rode on top of a freight train. No kidding. It was Sunday, a week ago and my second day in Ecuador, when Audrey rousted me at 5:30 a.m. Ecuadorian time (2:30 a.m. in my head) to get a "seat" on top of a seven-car train with two of her friends, Sara and Alli. We were in an $8-per-person hotel in Riobamba, a town of 126,000 in the heart of the central highlands of Ecuador, with tickets for the train ride to Sibambe, a six-hour adventure. The ride, called "spectacular" by my guide book, takes us south through countryside dominated by small farms to "El Nariz del Diablo" (the Devil's Nose) and back to Sibambe. From there, it's a bus ride to someplace else. In the street, we haggle with a woman for fresh bananas and buy four for $1. The girls buy bread while I rent four cushions for $3. The pads turn out to be a must-have for the long ride and the man wanted $1 each, so I feel pretty smooth. On top of the train, we find an exchange student from Georgetown and her dad have already staked out an area for us. Bundled up in hoodies, fleece, beanies and gloves, we settle in for the journey and eat our breakfasts. It's an hour before the train pulls out and, immediately, we understand why the guidebook warns us to wear clothes that can get dirty. Soot, steam and cinders from the engine pummel us the entire trip, and we're on the third car. No wonder the Ecuadorians sat at the end of the train. They knew. For awhile, its exciting, but once we figure out there's little chance of us falling off the train (12-inch safety rails that we´ve snapped our backpacks to) and that the kids smiling and waving at the passing train really just want candy thrown to them, the trip has less thrill. It's also very long. We take a lot of pictures of scenery, towns, people waving and us on the train early, but the excitment wanes and we nap. By this time, its warming up and we've peeled off some layers of fleece. I roll up my jeans to cool off and fall asleep. At more t han 2,000 meters above sea level, this is a mistake. I wake up with sunburned legs and we're still not to the Devil's Nose. The Devil's Nose, especially from the roof of the train, is a death-defying stretch of track between Alausi and Sibambe. The run we're doing is the only leg of the Ferrocarril Transandino (Trans-Andean Railway) that still functions. Construction of the railway began in Guayaquil in 1899 and made is as far as Sibambe with littl e problem. There, workers encountered a steep Andean slope made of solid rock. This is the Devil's Nose. Workers carved out a series of switchbacks to allow the train — by advancing and reversing — to ascend almost 1,000 meters to Alausi. The railway got there in 1902, reached Riobamba in 1905 and finally arrived in Quito in 1908. However, the train doesn´t make the run from Guayaquil to Quito anymore. Lanslides caused by the torrential rains of the 1982-83 El Nino and further damage during the 1997-98 El Nino closed the entire track. Since then, only the stretch from Riobamba to Sibambe has been repaired. The part we're riding through involves that steep decent accomplished with two switchbacks and, at one point, changing the position of two cars an the engine, then heading back up the mountain. Leading up to the descent, the train crosses rickety bridges and barrels through tunnels with little clearance above our heads. But we´re not there yet. The train stops a couple of times and, once, we get out and pay 10 cents to use a restroom behind a small store. On top of the train, vendors try to sell us candy, drinks and dried fruit. Audrey and I split a cheese empanada that's a little short on the cheese and I read a David Sedaris book for awhile. Then the train stops. We're not in a town or even close to a road or farm, where something may have wandered onto the tracks. After several minutes without movement, I climb down the ladder to see what the crowd of people around the second-to-last car are rubbernecking at. It wasn't a person or a small animal. The train had derailed. Now when I think about derailed trains, I pictured masses of crumpled metal, maybe a chemical spill and definitely some injuries. Here, none of that. Two wheels had simply rolled off the rails. Of course, hoisting a several-ton freight car back onto the tracks is not an easy task. All of us tourists just stand there with cameras snapping shots of our big mishap while two crew members rush from the engine to the rear of the train with two metal poles and two chunks of metal. The chunks turn out to be short, arched rails that will push the wheels back onto the track. The crew dug holes in the dusty gravel, situated the metal chunks next to the track and within minutes, we were back in business. Tourists clapped and, on the car where people were drinking Pilsners, song broke out. But, by the time we get to Devil's Nose, us girls are worried about when the buses we need to catch leave. We all need to return to Ambato, another town in the central highlands. From there, Sara and Alli head back to Quito, while Audrey and I need a ride to Banos. When we actually do it, the Devil's Nose is is not that scary. The shaky bridges leading up to it have more hair-raising thrill to them. The turnaround point is noth ing more than a track in scrub grass at the base of the cliff and, although we derail a second time, the seven hours on top of a freight train needed a little bit more. Perhaps the people with the Pilsner, Ecuador's national beer, had the right idea. Jennifer Squires returns from her vacation tomorrow . 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