Tuesday 20th January: To Alausi and the Devil's Nose with a lack of tourist information
Today was another moving on day, so it was an early start to catch the bus from Banos to Alausi. We had already bought our tickets so we just needed to get down to the Terminal Terrestre which we did by taxi.
The final destination for our bus was Cuenca, where we will go in a couple of days.
We initially head up a dust road that wasn't very wide and skirted the edge of a canyon. The local volcano is Tungurahua, but it was shrouded by cloud.
The bus was meant to be air conditioned and also have WiFi, but....
Later we joined the Panamericana which is tarmaced but progress still seemed slow.
For a while we ran alongside the famous Quito to Guayaquil railway. Sadly it shut during Covid and in some towns like Latacunga, they have tarmaced over the rails.
About four hours later we were told to disembark by the bus assistant. We were decanted on a roadside above Alausi near a petrol station. We could see the town below. There was a small train on display, celebrating the Devil's Nose, an amazing piece of railway engineering. It only recently reopened and we rescheduled our whole holiday to make sure that we could travel on it.
After a few minutes we waved down a cab which took us to our very nice lodgings. (More on that tomorrow)
The town was in low cloud so we decided to head into town to book our train tickets. Joan checked the guidebook and also Google and it said trains ran Tuesdays to Sundays, three times a day. But then she found a different site which said Thursday to Sundays.
The train station was a few minutes walk away. Awaiting us were the engines and coaches ready for their journey. However, the trains were not running till Thursday! We're meant to be in Cuenca on Thursday, The only journey was 11 am and lasts two and a half hours so we thought, OK, we'll book tickets and then travel to Cuenca in the afternoon.
Apart from the train, Alausi isn't really a tourist destination but we know there was one place which catered for our diets. El Meson del Tren restaurant is trackside with vast vaulted interiors.
We ordered some wine and were offered so Ecuadorian wine. We'd never had it before so tried it. It was like a light Bordeaux.
Joan had a huge plate of spaghetti and garlic bread, which was great on a cold afternoon. Being South America, it, of course, came with avocado.
Kevin had the Lasagna. It was cosy and lovely.
As we finished our meals, three locals came over to talk to us. One of them had previously lived in London some years ago.
We explained that we had arrived in Alausi a day too early and asked what there was to do in town. We were told we could go to the park, look at the town clock and visit the black bridge. It ensued there really was not anything to do in town as anything of interest was several tens of miles away. The woman even suggested going to her house, in jest!
After dinner, it was still cloudy so we made our way back to our house. The tourist office was shut and at the local bus station, the only buses which ran to Cuenca left at 6.30 and 10.30 am. Too early for the train.
Back at the house, we asked our hosts if they could help with an afternoon bus to Cuenca but they came back with the same answer.
How things work in Ecuador can be frustrating. To find out where bus companies go to and when seems to be a mystery. Bus companies don't seem to have websites, and if you do find a website, the info is years old or the page is missing. There's no information on times, bus stops, etc. Locals just seem to know. To find out the buses to Alausi, we had to ask at the Terminal in Banos. It was similar with the trains. Tren Ecuador, the national company, doesn't have a website, and what we did find suggests no trains run in Ecuador. At home we'd randomly found a website to say the train ran Tuesday to Sunday. But, now here, it was only by chance we stumbled across another site that said the trains run Thursday to Sunday at Alausi.
What we did know was that we had been deposited on the Panamericana beside a petrol station, which wasn't at Alausi terminal. We believe there are about 8 buses a day between Riobamba and Cuenca, passing Alausi, that run, some in the afternoon, and these would pass where we were dropped off. So we asked our hosts if they could help. After an hour or so they came back with a zero answer and suggested that we just wait at the petrol station for a passing bus!
It all seems chaotic. So tomorrow, we are going to see if the Tourist Information is open and hope they can shine a light on how we get out of Alausi and get to Cuenca.
Local Fire Station
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