Wednesday, April 12, 2006

The bathroom here is gross. I can't put my finger on why, because there are no obvious stains or anything, but it's icky nonetheless. And no toilet seat. So often there is no toilet seat, even in nice bathrooms with otherwise nice fixtures. I wish I could know why that is. Anyway, I got to vomit in that bathroom this morning, so yay, me.

The Nariz del Diablo train schedule is very approximate, I guess due to track conditions, so we only knew we had to be down at the station sometime between ten-thirty and noon. We stopped into a restaurant across the street from our hotel for breakfast. Michael got the deluxe breakfast, which was a chicken drumstick in gravy, rice, a fried egg, avocado, plantains and instant coffee. Not feeling up to eating all that, I had tea. Later we got the waitress to fix me a plate of just rice and gravy.

It was fairly warm as we walked down to the tracks, but I was determined to bring both my Capilene and my fleece anyway, figuring the wind would be strong on top of the train. At the station we were immediately struck by the crowd of gringos. Last night we were the only foreigners we saw, but this morning they were everywhere, sitting, standing, talking, walking around, eating snacks. More gringos than we have seen in a very long time.

I didn't relish the idea of doing something so completely and utterly touristy, but neither did I mind too much. If something's cool it's cool. But wow, what a lot of foreigners. The platform was similarly crowded and we got a bit nervous. There would probably be a large crowd on the train already, coming from Riobamba. Would there even be room for us?

After hanging around for a while with nothing happening, we walked back to our room for a few minutes and when we came back out, there was a train on the tracks. We went tearing down the street towards the station and when we got to the platform we recoiled in horror.

The thing on the tracks was not the train. It couldn't be. It was only one car, a gleaming yellow thing with fancy angled seats on top. On the side of this thing was a painting of the train we had expected to see, a multi-car affair with smokestack and caboose, winding through the mountains and passing smiling locals. It was like a drugstore Halloween costume, a plastic cape with a drawing of Superman on the front.

It wasn't even a train. Yes, it was on tracks, but it looked just like a bus. It had a steering wheel for crying out loud. We didn't want to ride a bus with a picture of a train on it, we wanted to ride a train. Michael approached a friendly-looking couple and asked them, "Do you know what's going on?"

"No idea," they said.

We hung around and watched the people arranging and rearranging themselves on the yellow thing.

"They don't look much like travelers," the guy said.

It's true that the passengers looked like part of an upmarket tour group. But it wasn't the time for a travelers/tourists debate. Who cares? Where is the train?

Sam and Sepi tried to take the train last week. It didn't work out for them because of mudslides, but they never mentioned that the train wasn't a train, and surely they would have. In fact, they even said that the first car had detached itself from the rest of the cars so that it could go on ahead and clear away the debris from the mudslide. So where were our multiple cars? Had there been another mudslide? Still problems with that same one? We were so confused and disappointed as the trainload of older people and children in crisp white t-shirts "chugged" away down the tracks.

Then another train approached and our hearts leaped. And sank again. This train was red but it was also one car only and also looked like a bus. It looked more like a train than the yellow one had, and there were no fancy seats on the roof, but it still had a steering wheel.

This train was apparently for the travelers, because it was immediately swarmed by a huge crowd of scruffy kids in Goretex and rainbow pants. Every popular sandal was represented. Chacos, Tevas, Merrills, Birkenstocks. All nice and dirty, like travelers' shoes should be.

The people we'd been talking to had tried to get the train in Riobamba but found that tickets were sold out. But they'd met a man who said he could take them to Alausí by bus and they could catch the train from there. But it wasn't looking good for them. We all milled around and tried to figure out what was happening and what we should do, in between insisting to small boys that we didn't need a shoeshine.

The travelers climbed, one after another after another, up the ladder to the roof of the train and settled themselves in on their little rented cushions. It didn't look good.

We heard a rumor that the train was coming back, but I didn't care. I was willing to participate in a tourist amusement park ride when I thought it was going to be a ride on a train, but this I was not interested in. Michael said that the whole point of taking a train down a series of switchbacks is the way it backs down them. He says its an engineering marvel, or at least it was.

But a bus can do whatever it wants. We know this because we have ridden down many a switchback in a bus in the past six months. And really, the views from a bus window pretty much anywhere in Ecuador are spectacular, so why pay three times as much to squeeze onto the top of a fake bustrain with a million other foreigners?

We would have liked to just cut our losses and hop on a bus to Cuenca, but we'd already paid for another night at our hotel with the icky bathroom. Michael suggested explaining and asking for our money back, but I had such low hopes of that happening that I didn't even want to put myself through the process.

We went to the Internet cafe, where I posted on the Thorn Tree asking about what we'd just seen. People seemed to think there was still a real train on the line, so I don't know what happened to us or why, or when the real train runs. But whatever. The comfortable yellow bustrain came back and disgorged its load of clean cotton tourists, and the uncomfortable red bustrain made three return trips for the rip-stop nylon travelers, but we, somewhere in between the target markets, had lost all interest.

Michael finally gave in and had his shoes shined by a kid with a homemade shine box. I feel for these boys. I'd get my boots shined every week if I were not suspicious of the dubious watery liquids they tote around in old soda bottles. These boots are the most expensive shoes I own, and probably will own for a while. I don't want to mess with them. But it killed me when another boy knelt next to the boy who was doing Michael's boots and kept trying to convince me that I needed a shine too.

Michael paid for his lustrador's services, and paid for a photo of the other boy. We chatted with them for a short while but neither of them smiled once, or rose the slightest bit above a listless unhappiness. They were eight and ten years old. Out wandering among the tourists and travelers hoping to make a buck. So I guess I should shut up about my disappointment over the fake trainbus. Still, what was up with those non-trains?

Wandering back from the tracks, we passed a restaurant displaying photographs of the food. I was attracted by a photo of some fried shrimp and rice, with a Coke for $1.50. So we went in and sat down among the posters of Paris Hilton and Che Guevara. Michael ordered some fried chicken. I ordered the shrimp. Twenty minutes later, his chicken was sizzling in the pan and the waitress/cook informed me that they were out of fried shrimp, and did I want some chicken nuggets.

No, I did not want chicken nuggets. I didn't want to sulk or anything, but for some reason I was feeling emotional and the news really upset me. But I calmly said we'd just have Michael's plate and I didn't want anything after all. I would have liked to just leave, but we knew the chicken was already cooking.

We were almost finished sharing Michael's chicken and fries and planning to go elsewhere afterwards, when the woman came back to say that she did have some regular shrimp if I wanted some of those. Which begs the question, what are the fried shrimp if they are not regular shrimp which are fried? So maybe I escaped something there. I declined the regular shrimp. It's too late now. We paid and left.

But after that I was just feeling way too demoralized to try another place, so I just went back to the room. Travel has its ups and downs, and this was a down. Nothing major could be pointed to - no train, no shrimp, no big deal. But sometimes emotions on the road can be extra tender for no real reason, and they were for me today.

Michael, bless his heart, came back to the room with a plate of takeout for me. He'd confused the restaurant staff by asking to see all the food first, but it was good food. Chicken and rice and salad, and papaya juice in a plastic bag.

Tonight we had dinner where we had breakfast. It was a rather frustrating experience from the beginning. We asked the boy in charge what there was to eat and he pointed to the steam table, which was labeled with all kinds of tempting things. Carne, chuletas, trucha, etc. But when we asked to see them, it turned out that he'd pointed to the lidded bins with the apparent expectation that we would know they contained only the day's merienda - soup, stew, rice, and plantains.

He showed them to us like we were stupid. "Seco... arroz... platanos..." Like of course the bin labeled chuletas de cerdo would be full of white rice, and why would we want to see it? Rice is rice. Fine, we'll take the merienda. He brought it to is. He did not bring us our sweet, sweet, sodas.

A toddler sat alone at another table screeching and wailing at the top of his lungs. The woman from the restaurant sat on the step and stared out into the street as though her establishment was not filled with a horrifying clamor. Once she turned slightly and said, "Shh." Which of course the poor kid didn't even notice. After a long, long, time, a van drove up and a young woman hopped and and collected the wailing boy.

After some time, a local family came in and the restaurant leaped to life. Lights were turned on, sodas were poured, multiple people came running with bowls of soup. It was kind of disheartening. Like, hey, we might have enjoyed eating our food with the lights on too, you know? It would have been a lot easier to pick the bugs out of our soup. But it's not the first time we've had that type of second-class service.

The first time we had the experience of asking for tortillas and having the waitress say sadly, "No hay tortillas," only to run outside five minutes later and come back with a steaming basket of tortillas for a local family... it really confused us and hurt our feelings. But I pretty much just shrug it off now, unless I'm having one of those sensitive days where everything is bad and sad.

Luckily we had a good view out the window and across the street, where some drunk guys were standing around talking. One of them detached himself from the group, walked two steps to a pillar near the curb, and urinated on the sidewalk. (Not an uncommon sight at all on this trip.) He finished up and rejoined the group. A new guy came along and started shaking hands with everyone. We waited to see if the new guy would shake hands with the urinator, or more to the point, if the urinator would shake hands with the new guy. He did.

So that was our day in Alausí, which joins Mazatlán, Siliguri and Buffalo in that very special box in my mind. The Devil's Nose train runs only on Sunday, Wednesday and Friday, so we're not going to stick around another two days to see if we have better luck next time. We are quite happily getting out of here first thing tomorrow.

TIMES VOMITED (Megan): 10

 

Post a comment:

Name:
Email:
URL:
A duck says:
Comment: (HTML is allowed)

The Nariz del Diablo tourist train, Alausí.

Look, there's even a rainbow on it.

The traveler train comes back to Alausí station for another run.

Travelers board the traveler train.

Packed to the gills, as Michael would say.

The tourist train returns.

Shoeshine boys. Efrain, 8 and Juan Pablo, 10. Alausí.

Shinebox, Alausí.

Disfruta Coca-Cola in Alausí.

Kids, Alausí.

The "traveler" train comes back for the third time. Alausí.

Fog, Alausí.

Burro, Alausí.

Ché and Paris and assorted half-naked chicks, Alausí.

Fog, Alausí.