Last Sunday we went with Pete and Pattie (met Pete at Yanapuma, they are from Bloomington, MN) to Alausi. We wanted to take a bus, and did. We got up at 6:00, and made the 7:00 bus. What we failed to ask was, as it turns out, the seminal question: “when does it arrive in Alausi?” We did NOT have an express bus, rather stopping whenever someone raised a hand along the side of the road.
Even so, it was a beautiful ride:
We arrived in Alausi at 11:15 and missed the train (8:00, 11:00, 2:00). They were sold out for the rest of the day, but someone had cancelled at the last minute. We got tickets. After a nice lunch, we arrived in the queue to get on the train. There was a class from the collegio (high school) in Alausi that was also going on the trip.
Eventually, we got on. Met a couple from Arizona who run the American School there. They’d been all over and had a private guide that they shared with us.
Turns out at least 2500 people lost their live building this part of the railroad. The Ecuadorians seem quite proud of this. I’m not sure. It was designed by brothers from New York. Originally they thought a tunnel would do it. An avalanche ended that plan. Eventually they designed a system of back and forth going down 400 meters in a span of 12 kilometers (for those in the US, that’s crazy down for a very short space).
At the bottom we stopped, saw some indigenous dancing and a museum.
When we got back to Alausi, there were no more buses to Cuenca. We ended up hiking up to the Panamerican Highway to flag down a bus. We got on at 5:15 and made it to Cuenca by 9:30. Many stops on the way.
Love your blog! Read every one!