South America Travel Log

Our year long journey to Costa Rica, Equador, Peru, Bolivia, Argentina...

Arequipa and Colca Canyon

Filed under: Peru, Main — khutala at 11:40 pm on Saturday, September 30, 2006

Overnight bus from Cuzco to Arequipa  on Julsa for $12.  The trip took 9 hours.

We arrived at 5:30am.  We made a reservation with the hostal Tambo Viejo.  They said they would be at the bus station to pick us up.  We waited for 20-30 minutes before we decided they weren’t coming.  Then we took a taxi to the hostel.  It took a while for the lady to answer the door and it looked like we surprised her by our arrival instead of her being sorry for forgetting us. 

Tambo Viejo
 www.tamboviejo.comPrice -  $16 with bath and cable. 
Cleanliness – The rooms were very clean.  The common living area seemed a little cluttered. Comfort – The rooms in the back were very comfortable.  I should know.  I was sick, so I had to lay in bed for 24 hours straight.  They are doing construction in the front, so those rooms were very loud. It is on a very busy main street, so it doesn’t seem that secure when you first walk up, but we didn’t have any problems.  

Character – The courtyard/gardens were a nice place to have breakfast.  They had a really cute friendly dog and a parrot that says “hola” and barks. 

Amenities – supposed pick up from the bus station, cable TV in the rooms, an old computer with Internet downstairs and an internet cafe right next door. Supposedly they will help arrange tours and travel stuff, but no one was ever at the desk to do that.  We ended up using a tour company in town.  Breakfast and snacks are available to buy.  If you arrive before check in time and they have an open room, they will let you use it until your room is available. 

Recommended? - This is a tough one.  The room was very nice.  It was a good place to be sick and I loved the dog, but there were a couple of down sides that might make me look for somewhere different.  The people who ran the place seemed very scatterbrained and disorganized.  Like I said, they forgot to pick us up.  They rarely manned the front desk and they tried to charge us twice for the first set of nights we stayed there because they didn’t keep good records.    Also, it was just on the too far to walk side of things from the main plaza.  Arequipa has an amazing plaza and down town area.  It would have been nicer to be within walking distance.  
  Since I was sick, we didn’t do much.  It took a lot of energy just to walk around.  The Plaza is beautiful, so it is nice just to eat or have drinks in one of the balcony restaurants.  We also visited Santa Catalina.  It was very interesting, but without a guide, we just made up what a lot of the things were for or what the significance was.  We were there for an hour and a half and still hadn’t seen everything.  It did start to get repetitive, so we left without seeing all there was. 

Colca Canyon Tour
We went into a couple travel agencies to ask about tours and eventually picked one where the lady spoke clear Spanish and explained everything well.  It turns out they are actually recommended in Lonely Planet Peru, but I lost the brochure with their name.  I know they are on Santa Catalina Rd.  a block up from the Plaza de Armas on the left hand side.  Here are what the tours entail.2 day tour
We payed $23 each including guide, transportation, and hotel with toast for breakfast.  Entrance to park($12) , hotsprings($3) and meals were extra.  There were other price categories from $33-73.  The only difference was the hotel. 

•      Get picked up from hotel around 8:30am.  Depending on where you are on the list, this could take up to 30-40 minutes.

•      Drive to a little store to use the bathroom and buy coca candies etc.

•      Stop at a few vista points including to see the vicunas (llama relatives)

•      Stop for a bathroom break where they have a little craft market and cafe.  This was actually my favorite part because I got invited to play catch by 4 year old girl who was supposed to be posing for pictures for the tourists with her little llama, but she was not interested in that nonsense.  She just wanted to play.  We had a great time for about 15 minutes. 

•      Stop at the highest point on the mountain.  Over 4000 meters

•      Arrive at Chivay and eat lunch at an arranged location where they had a buffet ($5) or menu.

•      Drop everyone off at their respective hotels and have 2 hours for resting or walking around Chivay.

(Our hostel was the cheapest option and cheap it was.  The bed speads had stains all over them.  The window had a 2 inch gap in it making an already cold place that much colder.  The door rattled with the wind and the pillows were hard as rock.  It did have its own bathroom, but no seat on the toilet.  I didn’t take a shower.  It was too cold, so I can’t comment on the hot water it was supposed to have.)
•      Pick everyone back up to go to the hot springs. 

•      Return everyone to the hotel to get ready for dinner.

•      At 7:30 go to dinner at a mediocre restaurant with a great folkloric presentation of music and dancing.

•      Wake up at 5am to leave at 5:30 to make it to the canyon by 8:30.

•      Stop to see a church in a little town along the way

•      It is very cold at the canyon.  Wear very warm clothes.  You basically sit on rocks for 1-2 hours waiting and watching for the birds.  It is early, so the sun can’t really warm you that well. 

•      After we saw the birds, we went on a walk/hike for about 1 ½ hours along the edge of the cliffs.  It is beautiful, but by that time the day is getting warmer and the movement means you will want to shed some of your layers. 

•      Drive straight back to Chivay for lunch

•      Drive back to Arequipa with shorter stops at the same places for bathroom breaks. 

We had a good time on the trip.  We met some great people and saw some beautiful scenery and birds.

I realize that was pretty detailed and long, but I went into detail for 2 reasons.  1.)   We really didn’t know what the tour would entail before we left, so that made planning what to wear and bring a little difficult.  I also didn’t realize that it was over 5 hours of driving each day and so the vehicle the company has is very important.  Ours was not the most comfortable in the world.2.)   I enjoyed everything we did, but if you don’t have that much time, I thought of a way to fit in both Arequipa and the Colca Canyon trip.  Don’t go on the tour first thing in the morning.  Stay in Arequipa and do whatever you want until about 4pm.  Then take public transportation to Chivay where you can meet up with the group in time to see the Folkloric show in the evening The bus goes on the same route both ways, so the only thing you would miss would be the hot springs which were fine, but if you are short on time, they could be missed.  

We stayed at Tambo Viejo one more night and then left the next morning at 7:30 for Puno.   

Machu Picchu is expensive!

Filed under: Peru, Main — khutala at 1:51 pm on Wednesday, September 27, 2006

Amaru Hotel

http://www.cusco.net/amaru/

Price -  $18 without bath and with breakfast.  Quite a bit more with a bath. 
Cleanliness – Clean                                                                     Comfort – The beds were descent, but it was really cold in the rooms.  The shared bath was downstairs and a little inconvenient from the room.  Especially for midnight runs.  The computer and couch area was fine, but nothing great.  The floors are wood and so they squeak.  Ask for a room upstairs so you don’t have to hear the people above you.             Character – The building is old and charming.  There are potted plants in the court yard and interesting twists and turns to the building         Amenities – Airport pickup, nice breakfast, TV with local channels, book exchange, will organize tours, cheap internet, luggage storage. Recommended? - I would recommend the rooms with a bath.  If you are going for cheaper lodging, there may be other places that are better.  However, they were extremely helpful.  They let us sleep in a clean room from 7-11am until our room was available.  They also allowed us to use their facilities for 3 hours the day we returned from Machu Picchu until we were had to catch the bus later that evening.  
                                                                                     The lonely Planet Peru is 2 years old and the prices are totally off.  Basically, everything regarding MP has doubled.

Before we arrived in Cuzco, I didn’t realize you could only get to Machu Picchu on a train.  That creates a monopoly, so it is very expensive to get there.

Train from Cuzco to MP in vista dome (with a snack and windows on the roof to see the view of the mountains)  approx $105

Train from Cuzco to MP in backpacker train (can buy snack.  Bad windows for looking at view) approx $75

Train from Ollantaybambo to MP in vista dome approx $70              Train from Ollantaybambo to MP in backpacker train approx $50.   There are also really early  and night trains(around 5am and around 8pm) that is the cheapest way to go                                                             You can buy one way tickets that mix and match eg. Vista dome there and backpacker to return.  We had to do that because the return on the backpacker was sold out.  The one way price is more than half of the round trip price. 

We took a Sacred Valley tour and stayed in Ollantaybambo overnight then took the train from there.  We then returned to Cuzco with local transportation.  Sacred Valley tour - $12 per person includes transportation and Bilingual guide.  + $13 for 1 day tourist ticket to ruins.  (Can buy the 5 day $20 ticket for specific ruins, museums and churches)
Stop at Vista Points on the way to PisacCraft and souvenir market at Pisac (Sun, Tues and Thurs.  Worth going even without a tour)                                                                               lunch at Urubamba ($12 buffet is where they take you, but we walked across the street to a $3 place)                                                             Inca fortress at Ollantaybambo (we stayed here instead of returning to Cuzco)                                                                                                Chinchero to look at the church                                                                                              Return to Cuzco

Ollantaybambo
We looked at a couple different hotels along the road to the train station.  Oruquideas $25 for double room with bath and breakfast.  Kantayoc $11 double room shared bath, but no toilet seat.  KB Tambo $13 for double room with bath, but there was no separation between toilet and shower.  We picked Hospedaje Los Andenes $13 for double room with bath.  Nothing fancy, but it did the trick and the best we saw in that price range.  The attached restaurant was not so hot.  KB Tambo had a good breakfast.  The apple pancakes were delicious. 

Train to Machu Picchu the next morning around 9.  Arrived in Aguas Calientes.  A person from the hotel met us at the station and walked us over.  We stowed our luggage and then caught the bus for the last 8km uphill to Machu Picchu ($12) Entrance fee to Machu Picchu $40 (You can get a pretty stamp in your passport when you leave)The guide books are correct.  The highest number of visitors is between 10-3.  Groups of school children start to arrive at 12 or 1 and they stay later in the day.  They are sweet, but a little scary because they like to run quickly and almost knocked me down once.  We didn’t go with a group or hire a guide.  We thought we might once we got there depending on the cost, but we never saw guides available to hire.  I think you have to do it in Aguas Calientes but I’m not sure.  It was nice to stay in town over night so that we could stay later at MPIn Cuzco, I saw signs for a MP tour for $149.  If you are going to go there and back in one day, this might be a good deal depending on what is included. We ate at a pizza restaurant called Pachamama (not on the main strip).  It was very good.  Better than any other pizza we have had in South America so far.  The next day we returned to Ollantaybambo where we caught a local minibus to Urubamba (1 sol).  From there we caught a regular local bus back to Pisac (2 sols).  We didn’t have time to get everything we wanted during the Sacred Valley Tour also, due to the fact that it was a smaller market day and all the bus tours had been gone for a while, the prices started at a much much lower price. You could still bargain some but the price difference was much smaller between asking and final purchase price.  Buses back to Cuzco left from a street near the market (2.50 sols).  It was completely full by the time we got there, so we had to stand for the 1 ½  trip.   We left Cuzco on a night bus to Arequipa.  We went with Julsa for $12.  The trip took 9 hours.  Even though it was comfortable, it was difficult to sleep because there were at least 5 people snoring loudly at any given time.  We arrived exhausted the next morning.  As others have recommended, it might be a good idea to take a light sleep medication.

Flight from Guyaquil to Cuzco

Filed under: Peru, Ecuador, Main — khutala at 4:35 pm on Thursday, September 21, 2006

We flew from Guyaquil to Cuszco in order to avoid 48 hours straight in a bus and the border crossing that seems so dangerous. 

I checked with travel agents and on the airline website.  TACA was $50 cheaper than the travel agent quote for one way. 

One travel agent would only sell me a round trip ticket because we don’t have a return ticket to the States.  That was $470.  A one way quote from a different agent was $350. 

We got it for $298 one way through the airline itself. 

The flight involved an overnight lay over in Lima.  We stayed at a hotel called Manhattan Inn 7 minutes away from the airport since we had to be up at 3:30am to be at the airport around 4:15am.  Even though it is domestic, they still want you to check in 2 hours before hand.  The hotel cost $50 (more than I wanted to pay) but hotels in down town that cost more like $25 would require a $10+ taxi ride there and back then we are up to $45, so we just went with the slightly more expensive but convenient hotel. 

Guyaquil and Puerto Lopez

Filed under: Ecuador, Main — khutala at 4:25 pm on Thursday, September 21, 2006

Go to the Ruta del Sol Photo Album - Pictures of whales, la Isla and wildlife

Vilcabamba - Guyaquil
 Bus ride – bought our ticket that morning.  $10 for 9 hours.  The bus arrived in the evening and we discovered we had left our footprints guide in Vilcabamba.  That had the information for the hostel we had a reservation at.  So, we were kind of stuck.  We borrowed a phone book from the phone cabinas, but the hotel wasn’t in it.  The only places in the phone books are the fancy (chain type hotels).  I remembered a friend in Cuenca had recommended a hotel, but it was too expensive, so we didn’t want to go there.  However, I still had the paper in my backpack, so that’s where we went. 

Tangara
www.tangara-ecuador.comI won’t do a thorough write up.  Basically it cost $40 for a double with a bath, small breakfast  and air conditioning.  The place was fine and in a good location, but there was nothing special about it to make it worth $40.  Maybe $25-30.

Guyaquil is an interesting place.  We weren’t there for long, but they have malls nicer than what I have seen in the States and a really pretty board walk along a river with huge white sails and a view of the bridge lit up in blue.  Those were the good surprises.The negative aspect is the dishonesty of the taxi drivers.  Twice at the bus station taxi drivers tried to scam us.  We didn’t know exactly where we were going when we first arrived and one guy tried to take advantage of our lack of experience.  He tried to charge us $10 for what should have been a $3 ride. 

At the bus station there is a sign that says a taxi ride to a specific area will cost… Very helpful if you know what area you are going to.  It clearly stated $3 to the airport.  We took a taxi to the airport.  Chris only had a 10 and the driver only gave us $6 in change.  We asked him for our additional dollar back and he refused because he said it was $4.  I refused to get out of the cab until he gave us our dollar.  It was a bit embarrassing and seemed so silly for $1, but I really don’t like people to be dishonest and if people just give in all the time, it makes it easier for them to do in the future. 

Guyaquil – Puerto LopezBus – There are 2 routes.  One is 4 hours inland.  The other is more like 6 hours driving along the coast.

We went there along the coast and returned inland

Take a bus from the main terminal in Guyalquil to Santa Elena (offices #11-13 sell the tickets) $3 for 2 hours..  Don’t go all the way to Salinas.  Ask the driver to let you know when to get to the right place because it isn’t completely obvious.

Then hop on a green small bus that runs along the coast.  It was there when we pulled up.  $4 for 4 hours.

The town of Puerto Lopez is small enough that you could probably walk to any hotel you want.  Or you can take a moto-taxi for 50 cents. 

Return trip – $1  1 ½  hours to Jipijapa.  When the bus drops you off, walk across the street to the bus terminal and then take a bus back to Guyaquil 2 ½ hours for $3.  It looks counterintuitive on the map because you go in the opposite direction at first, but it is shorter.

Mandala
http://www.hosteriamandala.info/ Price -  2 different types of rooms.  Double cabins $26 and family cabins $30 all with bathrooms.
Cleanliness – Very cleanComfort – Nice.  The beds were good.  They also had sturdy comfortable hammocks outside each room.   

Character – This was my favorite hotel we have been in.  They thought of so many little details from the woodwork around the mirrors to the stained glass windows in the bathroom.  The gardens are beautiful and the cabins are very private.  The pictures on the website don’t do it justice.

Amenities – A restaurant is open all day.  The food is good.  Book exchange, games, full percussion set in the lounge, cable in the lounge, will set up tours for you

Recommended? - Definitely! 
 The whale watching trips and visits to Isla del la Plata are regulated so that there is little difference in price if you go with a licensed agency. Whale watching, hike on the island, snorkeling, and a snack cost $30.  It lasted from 9-5pm.  Watching the whales was amazing.  We saw breeching and jumping and flukes and waving fins.  They are absolutely awe inspiring! I checked out a couple of other hotels while we were there.  The Playa Sur was $7 per person for a  small cabin with a bath.  Cheaper with a shared bath (no hot water in shared facilities). We would have stayed there as a second choice.  Most of the other hotels were in buildings and were just regular rooms.  This is the only town where people lowered the price to encourage us to stay.  There is a restaurant called Whale Cafe that has a variety of food (chinese, vegetarian, pitas etc.)  It was pretty good and a nice change from the typical Ecuadorian restaurants.  We met some people who came on the whale watching trip with us.  They were staying at Montanita.  They said it is cuter, has good surfing and more of a party town. 

Cuenca – Vilcabamba

Filed under: Ecuador, Main — khutala at 9:52 pm on Saturday, September 16, 2006

Days 23-24

Bus ride – bought tickets to Loja ahead of time because of religious holiday in Loja.  The bus leaves approx. every 2 hours.  $7 for 5 hours.

Then we took a small bus from Loja to Vilcabamba.  They run every 20 minutes or so and cost $1 for 1 ½ hours.   (Chris was pick pocketed while putting our suitcases in the luggage compartment.  So many people crowding around)

Rendezvous
www.rendezvousecuador.com

Price -  $9 per person including breakfast
Cleanliness – Very clean
Comfort – Nice.  The beds and pillows were great.  They also had sturdy comfortable hammocks for each room.   
Character – The rooms themselves were very much to my liking.  White washed adobe walls with high ceilings and fun bedspreads.  The gardens were fine, but not as nice as some of the other hotels.  
Amenities – breakfast, hot water, fresh water, wireless Internet for $3 (per day), dvd player and video rental for $2, evening campfire in the middle of the garden.
Recommended? - Yes, it is a nice comfortable place at a descent price.  It is not really a good place for meeting others, but if you are there with friends already – go for it.

I also peeked inside the Hidden Garden.  (www.vilcabamba.org/jardinescondido.html) It was $11 per person including breakfast.  The gardens were much more beautiful, but the rooms were not as tastefully decorated.   They had a common tv room and a swimming pool/jacuzzi.

We wanted to get massages since that is one of the things Vilcabamba is famous for.  Our friends had to return to Cuenca, so we switched to another hotel that was recommended for their spa.

 Madre Tierra
http://www.madretierra1.com/esfirst.html (in Spanish)

Price -  starting at $12 per person including breakfast and dinner (very nice) shared bath supposedly with hot water, but that didn’t happen for me.  The descent rooms were more like $22 per person. 
Cleanliness – Clean, but there was something about it that seemed slightly off…I’m not sure if dusty is the right word. 
Comfort – Well, every room is different.  We stayed in the cheap room and it was not really comfortable.  It was more like a storage closet.  I peeked in other empty rooms. Some looked like they would be comfortable.  They had some idiosyncrasies.  For example one room had a toilet and sink on the side without any barrier between it and the bed.  Then the shower was literally outside. The opening was a normal curtain that didn’t seem to provide much privacy between the showerer and the rest of the hotel.    
Character – Definitely has character.  The gardens are beautiful.  Each room is unique.  Some I liked and others were just fine.    
Amenities – breakfast and 3 course dinner, fresh water and juice, wireless Internet for $3, swimming pool, spa facilities for ½ price for guests (1 hour massage = $14), outside bar with a tv, pool table and basketball court. 
Recommended? - Yes and no.  If you have enough money to get a nicer room then sure.  The dinner they served alone would cost about $8, so for 4 more it seems like it is a pretty good deal, but I didn’t want to be in the room for more than 5 minutes when we weren’t sleeping. 

Note:Ask the bus driver to drop you off on the way into town.  On the way out it is better to take a taxi to the terminal terreste  if you want to be guaranteed a seat. 

Horse riding is $5 per hour 2 hour min.  4 hours normal.

Mini-bus Vilcabamba – Loja.  $1

Bus Loja – Guayaquil $10 for 9+ hours (They only run about every 3-4 hours.  Find out the time before showing up)

Cuenca - Sampere Language School

Filed under: Ecuador, Main — khutala at 6:00 pm on Sunday, September 10, 2006

Day10
Cuenca

Verde Limon
www.verdelimonhostal.com
Price - $14 for a double room and a shared bath ($6 for a dorm) and something of a breakfast (stale bread and coffee).
Cleanliness – Clean, but not spotless
Comfort – Nice mattresses but the pillows were a little lumpy. It had 2 lounges one for movies (downstairs) and one for tv (upstairs). The couches were fine, but nothing to revel in.
Character – There is green everywhere fore the verde part, but there isn’t anything that made this places stand out.
Amenities – breakfast, hot water, shared kitchen, 2living rooms with 100 DVD’s to choose from. They have a cable box, but it didn’t work and they didn’t know how and/or wouldn’t bother to try and fix it . Close enough to walk to a popular dining and bar spot.
Recommended? – It’s cheap. So, for the price yes. The place was sufficient, but nothing to write home about. The employee was more interested in his girlfriend and his wine (he was pretty drunk by 9pm) than he was in helping us out. We stupidly forgot our alarm clock in the US, but so far every hostel has been able to wake us up exactly when we needed to be up. I asked him for the same service, but 7am rolled around and we woke up because of the light in the window. He was still fast asleep.

We stayed in Cuenca for 2 weeks to study Spanish at Sampere Language School. By the time we finished we had 4 weeks of Spanish under our belt. Chris is doing really good because all the Spanish he had in high school came back to him. I think I would still struggle to get around by myself after only 1 month of classes, but I think I could do it and get by.

Estudio Sampere
www.sampere.com

Price – varies (based on hours a day, days per week and home stay or not) see website for details.

Education – You do not get your full 4 hours here. The 4 hours includes the breaks. However, I actually preferred it that way because by the last ½ hour my brain is usually pretty full anyways, so I seemed to be able to stay focused here a little better. They divide the classes into 2 segments: grammar for the first ½ with one teacher, a break and then, conversation class with a different teacher for the 2nd ½. I really liked that method. It allowed for more exposure to different people. Just changing the teachers and the subject matter gave my brain a jolt and helped me to stay motivated. The curriculum was well organized. There was more variety than in Quito where we just conjugated verbs. We went from verbs to nouns to idioms to food to superlatives etc. So, there was definitely more covered although less intensively.

Extras - On Monday we went on a tour of the city. It was fast and all in Spanish, so I missed a lot of what he was saying, but it is important none the less. They have morning and afternoon classes, so the activities take place at 11am and after 6:30pm . The morning activities are visits to museums and culture discussions (useless for beginners). The evening activities are Spanish films, dance and cooking classes. We enjoyed going to them to hang out with everyone, but EVERYONE went, so it was more like cooking demonstrations than actual classes etc.

Amenities – Not much. This school has a great academic program, but not much else. There is an internet cafe across the street. A cafe/bar downstairs. A travel agent 3 blocks away, Terra Diversa, (who are recommended by the school, but I found to be extremely unorganized and not very helpful)

Recommended? Yes, I thought their Spanish program was great. We stayed with an amazing host family(Although, not everyone is so lucky). For absolute beginners I still think Costa Rica is the best school to go to, but I really enjoyed our stay here.

Musuem of Modern Art – certainly nothing compared to the TATE or SF MOMA, but it is free and they had some really nice pieces.

Museo de Conception ( not the exact name) - $2.50 is an interesting place for religious art. Probably not my favorite museum, but not a bad way to spend 45 minutes.

Cacao y Canela – a cafe specializing in chocolate. Has the best hot chocolate we have ever had (never been to Switzerland or Italy)

We really liked Cuenca. It felt safe. We walked home together up until about 11pm. It was full of character and interesting buildings. It was also very pretty with the mountains in the background and the trees lining the 4 rivers. It is a great place for something like studying Spanish, but as a tourist there probably isn’t a TON to do other than just hang out, eat and walk around.

The Devil´s Nose Train

Filed under: Ecuador, Main — khutala at 1:42 am on Friday, September 1, 2006

Quito- Riobamba
Day 11-12photos  -  http://theprudhommes.net/photos/thumbnails.php?album=5&page=2 

 We took a taxi from our host family to the bus station (on the opposite sides of town).  The taxi cost $6.  We weren’t very impressed because the taxi driver took us on all the VERY busy main down town streets.  It took about 45 minutes.  When we had gone to the bus station to the week before, the driver went on a “freeway” that shortened the drive by at least 15-20 minutes.  By the time we realized that we weren’t going on the freeway it was too late.  So, we don’t know if he was going the long way to rack up the meter, or if there was some kind of problem on the freeway we didn’t know about.  That’s when having a more extensive vocab helps since we didn’t know the word for freeway in Spanish.

There were multiple bus companies that went to Riobamba.  We just walked down the hallway until we found one leaving in 10 minutes, so that’s how we picked the company.  It was a nice comfortable bus.

$3.80 for about 4 ½-hours

I was worried about being there at the correct time and what companies etc. but it seems like, as with Otavalo, just show up and, there will be a  bus to take you in the very near future. 

Tren Dorado
296-4890 email: htrendorado@hotmail.com

Price -  $18 for a double with a private bath.  I don’t think they had dorms, but I could be wrong.
Cleanliness – The rooms were very clean.  The gardens were really dusty and gray.  That is probably the result of the ash from the volcano eruption and not a permanent thing.   

Comfort – Nice mattress and pillows.  The lounge areas were not all that inviting, but probably fine if you wanted to use them.  We asked for a room in the back.  The street noise was really loud in the reception, but we couldn’t hear any of it from our room. 

Character –  The ceiling in the room had the fancy Victorian patterns on it.  The decorations were floral and tasteful.  It was a pleasant room to be in. 

Amenities – nice breakfast starting at 5am on the days when the train runs, hot water.  There was a restaurant attached to it.  I recommend getting the local cuisine.  It had a TV and book exchange in there, but none in the lounge areas.  Internet down the street. 

Recommended? – Yes, it is right across the street from the train station, so that is a nice bonus when you are trying to figure things out so early in the morning.  But, read further for a different idea.
 We went to Riobamba because that’s where it sounded like you are supposed to go in order to ride The Devil’s Nose Train.  I read quite a few blogs before we went.  Some people said it was amazing.  Others said it was nothing more interesting than what you would see out of a bus window.  Well here is my opinion.

The train cost $11 each.  (more than I had anticipated)

Then you had to rent cushions for $1 each (2 are really necessary.  One for your bottom and one for your back. )  If you go from Riobamba it is a 6 hour journey. 

Before we left many people were up there selling things like tea and soft drinks(don’t do it!  Trying to hover over a diarrhea filled toilet on a shaking train is not my idea of a good time) snacks (they will be there the whole time, so you can wait until you are hungry), face masks (I don’t think they would be very comfortable, but I constantly had grit in my teeth, so someone might want one) and rain ponchos (The 2 clouds in the sky sure didn’t look like rain, but when it started pouring for the entire hour back to Alausi, I bet the people who had them were pretty happy about their purchase.)

The first 3 hours of the trip offer pleasant views.  It was quite freezing with the early morning chill on top of the wind created by the moving train.  We were next to the highway for at least 1/3 of the trip.  So, yes you probably could see most of it from a bus window.  However, from the train you can see all around you compared to the 4×4 view from a bus window. 

After 2 hours we stopped in a small town to use the bathroom and stretch. 

Then on for another hour or so before we reached Alausi.  The number of people who were on the train almost doubled here.  They didn’t get the best seats, but I think it would have been much better to go from Quito to Alausi and then catch the train from there around 10 am.  6 hours on the top of a very uncomfortable, freezing, dirty (I have never been so dusty in my entire life as I was when we were done with that trip) train is a LONG time.  If we had cut off the first 3 hours that were unnecessary we would probably have enjoyed the other parts more.

The part from Alausi into the mountains would be impossible to replicate on a bus.  It was arid mountains, but they were magnificent.  You get to feel small and insignificant from the bottom and feel the lurch in your stomach when you look down 1000 meters into the canyons below.

The second part was definitely worth the views.    

The train returned to Alausi where we caught a bus to Cuenca.  A guy on the train was selling tickets for the bus.  We were skeptical to buy them because you had to pay right then, but we were glad we did because it was totally full of people who had just gotten off the train.  A few people ended up standing. 

The bus wasn’t as nice as the one to Riobamba, but it was fine.

$5 for about a 4 hour trip. 

We tried to get money out of the ATM in Riobamba on Sat when we arrived.  We went to 4 different banks and none of them would give us any money.  We checked our accounts and all our money was still there, so we couldn’t figure out what the problem was.  We tried again on Sunday in Alausi – no luck again.  It finally worked in Cuenca Monday morning once we were down to our last $3 (Yikes!)
So, we still haven’t figured out if it was small towns or weekends or something else…any ideas? 

I’ll post on Cuenca soon.

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