We continued our sinuous way north through the Andes. Between Cuenca and Riobamba, we stopped in Alausí: a tiny town sitting on a cliff in a deep Andean valley. Actually, there was nothing THAT special but a general laid-back feeling.
The most important tourist attraction there is doing a trip by train on the railway which in former times wound its way all the way from Guayaquil at the coast to Quito at 2800 m altitude. A truly impressive engineer’s masterpiece. But because of landslides cutting off tracks and fading numbers of passengers they terminated the train operation and converted parts of the tracks into tourist attractions. One of them is the trip to the mountain “Nariz del Diablo” (devil’s nose) with the highlight of going back and forth on railway tracks constructed in a zig-zag pattern in order to overcome the hight difference of the mountain’s steep slope. You do not travel like this everyday being on a train!
Back to Alausí, everyone was in soccer world cup fever, since Ecuador played against Switzerland. Locals stopped in the middle of the road looking at one of the shop’s numerous screens! Unfortunately, Ecuador lost in the very last minute in an otherwise balanced match… Meanwhile, we explored the local markets, always glancing at the TVs! 😛
The next day we hiked the surroundings of Alausí. We crossed the Panamericana and climbed up the steep grassland. Finally, we were rewarded with a splendid view of the colourful fields and the clouds embedded in the coastal plain. The sunset turned the wavy hills with crops into different shades of gold. Before we started hiking earlier that day, we did not really know what we will experience. Sometimes, you just have to start walking…
Ecuventure 