Tren Cucero: Quito to Guayquil

Ecuador: 26 -29 August 2014

This adventure probably has us squarely classified as train aficionados.  We left Quito behind in a old revived train as the first part of our Tren Cucero experience. Ecuador’s railway system was in disarray after the 1980s as the government sold most of the stock & track fr scrap metal (so we were told). Recently revived sections of the previous passenger lines and those lines that were still in good condition have been reconnected and are now solely being used for tourist trains. Our train experience – the whole journey from Quito to Guayaquil – only started operating last year.  Our fellow fifty or so passengers were a fairly eclectic bunch. We, together with another UK  couple roughly our age and the three small children of an American family, significantly lowered the average age of our travel group. Our other fellow travelers consisted of crazy Bolivian travel writer based in Canada, a German couple, a Columbian couple living in the US checking out possible retirement destinations, an American couple who decided to retire in Quito, a religious Ecuadorian couple, a Scottish accountant couple, a French serial business traveler, a Texan and Oklahoman on their Ecuadorian adventure and a few others we didn't really get to speak to. It was very interesting to discover peoples life-stories and motivations. The train trip itself wasn't your standard sit on a train all day affair – far from it. For the most part we were off on little excursions along the route and we also didn't spend the nights on the train, but in Haciendas. Below is an outline of our daily itinerary:

• Day 1: Cruising in the train along the ‘Avenue of Volcanoes’ and visit to Cotopaxi National Park. Unfortunately we didn't see many of the volcanoes due to cloud cover. Lunch and Dinner were both in super romantic Hacienda’s
• Day 2: Visit to a rose plantation, which to our surprise was actually really interesting. Nevada Roses produces 70,000 (!) long stem roses a day and twice that many before Valentine’s or Mother’s day. Ecuador, due to the altitude, soil, climate and closeness to the equator has the perfect conditions for growing roses straight and tall. On the highest point of the tracks (3600m) we also met Balthazar the last Chimborazo ice seller. His profession has died out with the advance of refrigeration. He is 70 now and still continues to go up to the Chimborazo glacier every week to bring back large cubes of ice. His brothers retired from the craft, but one is now producing ice cream with the Chimborazo ice. We met him too and his ice cream was tasty. BBC did an article on Balthazar and there is also a documentary on him. He has been declared living cultural heritage.
• Day 3: We visited a local indigenous market and stood out like sore-thumbs among the colorful sea of locals in traditional dress. We were offered a piglet in exchange for a camera. In the afternoon we cruised through ‘Devils nose’, a switchback system down from the Andean plateau at quaint Alaussi to the coastal area, and Ecuador's rail engineering marvel. We also saw the oldest/first church in Ecuador
• Day 4: Visit to a Cocoa Plantation where we got to try cocoa in all its forms (fruit, raw & refined chocolate). This was followed by a rather uncomfortable visit to the Shoa Community, an indigenous community who migrated several generations ago from the Amazon to the coastal area to avoid warfare.

Overall this was probably the most touristic of all of the activities we have done so far, yet we learned a lot about the country. For example there are 12 languages spoken in Ecuador and the two official ones are Spanish and Quecha.