Yet another nightmare bus journey on awful Ecuadorian roads with huge landslides, smelly passengers and hours spent bumping along without any air conditioning, and then we arrived to Riobamba.Riobamba is definitely not the most happening of places we´ve been. In fact on a Friday night we couldn´t find a bar with anybody in it! But we did pass literally thousands of teenagers all spilling out of teenage discos with blazing music at 5:30 in the day! Weird!

However Riobamba is the home of the Nariz del Diablo train line which is apparently the greatest feat of railway engineering ever seen in the world with many switchbacks and changing of tracks allowing the train to descend at a 45 degree angle into a valley where space for the rails has been carved into the sheer stone of the mountain. Not so good for large trains so only single engines make the trip now.

Due to heavy rains we could only ride on part of the line from Alausi but as this is the most spectacular part of the journey and contains the Nariz del Diablo section of railway we weren´t too concerned.Safety was somewhat of a secondary concern for these guys as we get to sit on the roof of the train trying to avoid the low branches, leaking water pipes above and rock walls - mind them toes. Some of the pins, in the rotten sleepers, holding the rails in place left us in no doubt as to why it derails regularly!!!

Volcan Chimborazo is also very close to Riobamba and it´s officially the nearest point on the Earth to the sun, something got to do with the Equatorial bulge (it´s 6,384.4 km apparently from the Earth's core to the peak). A climb was out of our league with ice climbing experience needed so we decided to go for a bit of a hike to the last refuge at 5,000m and then bike down the mountain and back to Riobamba, a journey of 37km. It was an amazing experience, the hike to the refuge wasn´t too bad but beyond that it was literally all snow and ice. And with all of the headstones dedicated to people who have died on the mountain we were pretty happy with our choice. We were seriously kitted up for the downhill biking with waterproof jacket and trousers, balaclava, helmets and gloves but just as we set out we discovered why as the mist turned to snow! God were we glad we weren´t climbing in this. After the snow and ice at the top the mountain quickly turns into puna, which is basically like a semi desert or a moon like terrain. The only thing that manages to survive up that far are vicunas, a type of llama. It was a pretty bumpy and cold ride but as we got further and further down the scenery and the weather changed to become more green and warm and sunny. We cycled through lots of tiny towns with friendly locals saying Ola as we passed, old women in their traditional clothes, kids waving and running out to high 5 us and dogs barking at us and running alongside. Riding downhill at speed through the mist and snow on the mountain and then through beautiful countryside was an amazing and really different experience, a definite highlight of Ecuador so far.