que tomas Tomas?: El Nariz

Thursday was a holiday, so all of the other students were heading out of town. I lost the OSU girls this week, who decided their interests were better served with another non-profit that was oriented toward their specialties. Cinterandes had follow up to our surgeries last week, and I wanted to go.
It could be a short day, and I did want to catch up with the others who had headed to Banos, but there were a few other things I wanted to do.
I met Dr. R and part of our mobile team at 8 and we left shortly thereafter. We only had a few patients to meet: those with sutures to remove, and the more involved procedures that required general follow up. We headed out to the rural clinic, along the familiar path, with conversation stemming from Ecuador's celebration of Semana Santa to political funding of health care in this country compared to the U.S.
We ran into a road block.

This was the worst section of the road, and they weren't about to finish, so we drove around. It added an hour to the trip, but we arrived at the health center exactly at the appointment time, and saw our patients quickly. One of the beauties of the program is that complications are rare. Screening plays the largest role here. Most patients are allowed to go home when they feel capable, and most require little follow-up. The program is structured to have local clinicians who monitor the patients as regularly as possible, and this diminishes the need for the surgical team, operating at a greater cost, to do so.
It was after afternoon before I could think about leaving for the weekend. It was too late to visit the closest and best preserved Incan ruins in the areahttp://www.ecuador-travel-guide.org/art&culture/IncanRuins.htm. I also wanted to ride the historical train to el nariz del diablo, http://www.destination360.com/south-america/ecuador/devils-nose-train, that may be leaving from Alousi among the volcanoes, so I set out.
There was much misinformation about the train - a local travel agent told me it left from Riobamba daily at 8 am, websites said it left every other day at 8:30am and 11am, the bus station said it left from Alousi at 7am.
Alousi was a short trip. But it was late and it seemed we stopped every few minutes to pick somebody up and drop someone else off. Fortunately, I made friends with my seat-mate, a mother of three on her way home for the holiday, who clued me in on the Alousi stop.
Nobody else was getting off, so by the time I signaled for a stop, I had to walk back for a while to see my destination.

It looked like a small town, but a cab drove up and I was glad to hop in and ask for his recommendation on a nice, inexpensive, place to stay. I didn't completely take his word for it, but after looking into a few other hostals, I stayed, and it was perfect.

view from the corner

I was able to walk down to the station and realize the actual times of departure before sleep set in.

I had some time to jog around the town. I was well laid-out: San Pedro was visible from nearly everywhere, the city center was orderly and I could easily to check out and purchase my train tickets.

It was time for the train. I had found the details - they left from this town only, at 8 sharp, and the original train had been refurbished. It had been said that the original train was retired. Besides the historical significance of running a train route up the side of an inhospitable volcanic range and back down in the early 20th century- by switching the tracks to run backwards several times - the train was known for allowing passengers to ride on top. Unfortunately, two passengers died while taking photos from the roof a couple years ago, so that was disallowed. In replacement, they outfitted buses on rails to run the tracks, but they were ill-received, and eventually the original trains were refurbished to meet the demand.
They still had seats outfitted on the roof, but passengers remained below.
Fortunately, the scenery did not change.