Posicionarte tells about doing the Devil's Nose!

Posicionarte, a travel media agency, was invited to discover the brand new Ecuador's cruise train trip 4 days 3 nights from the Andes to Coast, it's travel editor Andrew Taylor rides the world's most difficult train passage, through the Ecuadorian Andes, with four retired engineers from Derbyshire, England.

Throughout the 80s and 90s the Devil's Nose had become something of a traveller's extreme-sport. Once the "train wagon" was an old bus welded onto a bogey and the thrill, of course, was to ride on the roof. Those giddy days are gone. Andrew says "Nowadays, it's the history of the train line that gets us going: the epic ride, (sighs)... travelling by train through the Andes and meeting with indigenous highlanders and a Shuar community".

Ferrocarrile's 4 day scenic train ride, costs $990 and includes the voyage, food and accommodation. It's a first class experience celebrating a train line that once united the newly independent nation of Ecuador.

This scenic Andean train ride takes you deep into indigenous highland territory, it's life, Jim, but not as we know it. You go from Quito, the Ecuadorian capital (in the Andes) through Alexander von Humboldt's "Avenue of Volcanoes"; you stay in fascinating haciendas and visit a rose plantation and a cacao plantation. Deep into Andean God-knows-where, you're in an indigenous market that hasn't changed a blink in the last thousand years, and then you're moving towards the coast, meeting Shuar Indians and eating bananas fresh from the tree.

http://nz.finance.yahoo.com/news/posicionarte-tells-doing-devils-nose-010927492.html

I once rode the train from Duran to Riobamba up the Devil's Nose before the railway was washed out in the mid-90s. It was quite a novel experience.