The world’s most difficult railway runs, or more like huffs and puffs down the Devil’s Nose near a town called Alausi. It is a section of a railway utopia from Quito in the high Andes to Guayaquil by the ocean. A small group on very wealthy entrepreneurs thought it was hugely necessary a little over a hundred years ago and shipped in thousands of foreign workers to execute their plan at the cost of hundreds of lives. Familiar story… By now the railway is mostly defunct with certain sections merely operating for tourism purposes.

We took this round trip from Alausi down to Sibambe and back up. At the bottom, we were greeted by indigenous dancers and workers, pretending to occupy themselves with authentic village activities, whilst dressed in immaculate costumes and speaking ever so kindly to visitors in English. Must be the only English speaking tribe in Ecuador… 

Needless to say the whole experience is very touristic and a fake recreation of what it once may have been, however the railway is impressive. It zig zags down a practically perpendicular wall, going forward and then switching tracks backwards and again. Whether it was ever worth the large sacrifice of human lives is questionable (the museum seems to think it was), but it’s certainly an impressive engineering achievement and deserves the title of ‘The World’s Most Difficult Railway.’ This one is for train enthusiasts.

This was written some time ago off grid by lake Titikaka, but posted from Copacabana Titikaka on Tuesday 12th of Feb, half way through the trip.