Riobamba is known as the starting point of the “world’s most dangerous train ride”. It’s the rail line with the largest number of turns (mostly switchbacks) and the greatest gain/loss in altitude in the shortest distance. They built a rail line in the Andes mountains, so those are records to be expected, I guess. It also happens to be the line that endures the most landslides in the world, a nasty side effect of building rail line across mountain passes. It’s become solely a tourist attraction, and they only run the train on Wednesdays, Fridays, and Sundays now. We were there in the low season, so we got the first tickets they sold when we arrived at the ticket office at 8 am. We really enjoyed the train ride (even though it was really a converted school bus, not a real train), and saw some cool things, like a lot of indigineous people up early, walking their animals along the line, a cow that had to be pushed off of the train track (I guess cow-catchers aren’t just for fashion anymore!), a roast pig for sale, a landslide, the abandoned Siobambe train station in the valley, and of course, devil’s nose mountain. Check out the photo set to see them and some of the turns we had to deal with!
