Riobamba and the Devil's Nose

We arrived in Riobamba in the early evening and after sorting out accommodation (Hotel Los Shyris), and getting train tickets for the following morning we had a great dinner at a cosy little restaurant (can't remember the name), and an early night as the train departs at 7am.

Next morning I'm about to try and find an ATM before boarding the train, but as I pass the train station I can see the roof of the train looking pretty packed already (it was a Sunday, so there were lots of Ecuadorian tourists). So I skip the ATM and just head straight for the train, making sure to rent a comfy seat cushion on the way. I clamber up the ladder on the side of the first carriage, but it's immediately clear that there isn't any space to plonk our cushions. I stroll along the carriages and luckily find a perfect 2-cushion gap in the middle of a packed carriage roof, and so we settle down for the trip.

The train leaves pretty much on time and really crawls along at quite a leisurely pace. It's all very nice and pretty, although the weather was quite overcast (luckily it didn't rain at all). So the scenery was all very nice, but nothing amazing, although maybe I'm just getting complacent. The highlight of the trip though is a descent down a mountain side called the Devil's Nose, which due to the gradient requires the train to switch backwards and forwards a number of times - an amazing feat of railway engineering apparently. But I'm no railway buff or enthusiast and so I wasn't very blown away by it all, although it certainly was a nice day out, and it was cute watching all the local kids run towards the train and waving and shouting as it past - well, actually tourists often throw them sweets, so in fact I suppose it's really just a form of begging, still cute though!

After turning around and ascending back up the Devil's Nose we disembark in a small town and get a bus back to Riobamba. We'd been sitting on the roof of the train for nearly 7 hours, which sounds like an awfully long time, but in fact I didn't really notice it much, and found the whole time quite relaxing (and there enough stops along the way to stretch your legs). We derailed only a couple of times (apparently it can happen a lot more, and although it sounds terribly exciting, I didn't even notice until the train stopped), and each delay was quite short. I should have gotten off the train to watch how the guys sorted out a derailment, lots of people did, but I thought I'd have loads of opportunities, ah well.

So back in Riobamba for dinner, and then the next morning I strolled about the town to check it out a bit as Sarah stayed in bed (I think it's quite a nice town really). I wanted to wait around so that we could have lunch again at my favorite Riobamba restaurant, and because the bus to our next destination, Banos, only took a couple of hours so leaving in the afternoon was no problem.