Devil's Nose overrated

2006-10-20 11:48

Georgina Guedes

I am not difficult to impress. I can find delight in the smallest things. While so much in life ends up being different to expectations, I'm always the Pollyanna, finding something to be glad about where others are purely bemoaning their wasted time and money.

On the Galapagos Islands, the poor little Darwin's Finches were described by our bird book as "plump, dull sparrow-like birds with uninteresting songs".

I found them, with their vocal chirps and beady eyes, charming. Their obvious conviction that we were crumb trees as they followed us around the islands endeared them to me far more than some of their more garishly coloured counterparts.

In Laos, a country which impressed and amazed me in so many different ways, the only bleak spot was a trip to the Pak Ou Caves, a site to which the Buddhist faithful make a pilgrimage to deposit figurines of Buddha either in supplication or thanks.

The caves were dank and unimpressive in their own rights, and the collection of figurines was dusty and chipped, and not so much arranged as strewn about haphazardly.

Although our group was rather disappointed by this spectacle, I tried to find solace in the fact that we had enjoyed a pleasant river journey to the caves, and cheered myself up no end by buying a beautiful length of Laotian fabric at a nearby village.

Positively let down

But, no matter how much I tried to wind myself up, I was unable to put a positive spin on our visit to El Nariz del Diabolo, or The Devil's Nose, in Ecuador.

The Devil's Nose is a particularly steep bit of mountain in the middle of nowhere. It claims the claim to fame that the building of a railroad track down this slope was the most complex feat of railway engineering ever accomplished.

Although the train used to run from Riobamba a medium-sized town high in the Andes, to Guayaquil, the administrative behemoth at the coast, buses have since supplanted railways as the favoured form of travel in Ecuador, and most of the tracks have fallen into disuse.

What remains is the station in Riobamba and the 100-odd kilometres of track to the base of the Devil's Nose. There used to be a village at the base, but neglect has made a ghost town of the place, and the only people that catch the train are the hordes of tourists who are conned into thinking that this is an interesting thing to do.

Riobamba and all the surrounding towns' tourist populations evacuate on the mornings that the train runs. We all abandoned our other activities, horse riding, volcano watching and river rafting to pile onto the roof of a perfectly good and empty train carriage for the duration of the trip.

The seven hours that we spent in the sun were scalding hot, and the half an hour that we spent going down the Nose itself was remarkable only in its complete lack of anything to remark on.

Although building the switchback railway lines may be a remarkable feat of engineering, the slow route that the train zigzags down the mountain was not hair-raising as promised, and the scenery was consistently pale brown and dusty.

The bus ride back to Guayaquil was far more impressive than the attraction itself. And yet, thousands of tourists flock annually to the Devil's Nose. I guess Paris Hilton gets fan letters, despite her lack of talent.

Georgina Guedes is a South African woman travelling the world.

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