It’s been a while since the last update ! End of Feb we got to Cuenca, pretty colonial town, after taking the famous train ride called “Nariz del Diabolo” (the Devil’s nose) . Every tourist to the central sierra of Ecuador has one objective : get up at 5.30am, run to the last functioning train station in the country, race straight past the perfectly comfortable carriages and, instead, climb up to the where they can sit on the cold, hard metal roof and wait for the train to leave at 6.30 am to go absolutely nowhere… And we’ve done just that ! After getting to the station at 5.15, we aggressively fought with a hord of Ecuadorian tourists to secure 2 of the 25 roof seats available. The train runs for about 6 hours on an old, decaying narrow track through the highland countryside. We had been warned that it regularly derailed, but “not to worry, that’s part of the fun” (yeah right…particularly when you’re passing over old mouldy wooden bridges…)

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The train goes so slowly that we feel like on the roof of a bus (particularly when the train stops abruptly to let a chicken cross the tracks or allow the train conductor to remove the huge pile of mud that accumulated on the tracks...). In spite of that, we spend the first hour freezing ourselves in the absence of the sun. We hardly notice the countryside around, too busy trying to warm up our hands and feet. It’s a huge collective relief when the first rays of sun appear.

The next 4 hours are spent admiring the surrounding hills, going through small villages & past groups of Quechua Indians working hard in the fields, and waving back at kids eternally amused to see a bunch of tourists packed up on top of a train.

At last the highlight: the final hour long descent to the Devil´s Nose itself. This is a long mountain descent with sheer cliffs on either side. The train descends this through cuttings in the living rock of the cliffs themselves, with great views to the precipice far below. All in all, it was a complete tourist attraction, but a fantastic one !

4 hours bus later, we got to Cuenca. It’s a world heritage site, a perfect example of colonial Spanish architecture, pretty balconied houses, cobbled streets and quantity of churches. Our hotel lived up to the city`s reputation: an 100 years old hacienda , beautifully renovated with huge rooms opening onto an elegant inner courtyard. If it hadn’t been for the lack of central heating (that forced us to constantly wrap up in heavy alapaca blankets) we would have stayed there forever !

But it is now time to leave Ecuador . After 4 weeks, we’re gutted to leave this country as we completely and madly fell in love it : the food, the people, the variety of landscapes …everything is incredible ! We can’t help but feel that the rest of South America is not going to be as good and that we started by the best (which is obviously not true !) Peru, here we come !