Riobamba and the The Devils Nose Train

After scouring the internet in search of up to date information about the famous Devils Nose Train we jumped on a bus to Riobamba - not knowing whether it was going to run or not!! Riobamba as a town is pretty irrelevant so we were lucky that the train ran on Fridays.

For all those who google the Devil Nose Train it's scheduled to leave on Wednesdays, Fridays and Sundays at 7. We arrived at the ticket booth on Thurday afternoon to get Fridays ticket...unfortunately we were told that tickets would be sold at 6 am the next morning instead. As our hostel (Tren Dorado) was full and we guessed everyone was after the same thing we joined the queue at 4.45 am. We ended up about 20th (with a max of 40 tickets available) so the early rise was worth it!

The train itself left at 6.30 so we were last on, it turned out that the normal train was broken and so didn't run on Wednesday...we ended up on a vehicle similar to a bus driving on tracks!

Train wasn't that scary and brought you through the mountains of Ecuador which meant we saw some great scenery. The reversing down the mountain at quite a speed with the edge of the cliff less than 1.5 feet away may have actually been scary but the views of the Devils Nose (mountain shaped like a nose!) wasn't outstanding in comparison with the rest of the journey.

Contrary to the huide books the journey only took 4 hours and we hopped off at Alausi at 11.15. We then had a very warm and slightly uncomfortable bus journey to Cuence where our search for the Panama hat continued!