Tips 👏
- It’s a tiny city pretty quiet, with not so much around beside the train.
🏠 Accommodation
We slept one night at Community Hostel Alausi, basic but brand-new clean rooms with free coffee area, highly recommend.
🚲 Getting there
Private transfer from Baños for 80$ in three hours, see below.
⏱ Duration
We stayed one day and one night and felt that was enough.
Baños to Alausi 🚕
Like most tourists, we decided to go to Alausi for the Devil Nose Train. There’s two departures a day, 8AM and 11AM. We could either go a day in advance to catch the early train and then leave Alausi, or take an early transfer to catch the 11AM train.
We’ve opted for the second option, specially since we had to commute to Guayaquil afterward. The earliest bus to Alausi was leaving at 8:30AM, making it too late for the 11AM train. We asked around and found a lovely driver who accepted to bring us there for 80$, leaving at 7AM, in a comfy and safe pick-up. We reached our hostel in Alausi at 10AM, checked in and arrived at the train station on time.
It was a bit tight so if we would do it again, we would leave at 6:30AM for the peace of mind. Our driver, Carlos, also informed us he’s doing that quite often, you can contact him via WhatsApp (+593987459030) or his Trip Advisor Page.
Devil’s nose 🚂
After checking in, we went at the station to board the train (20 minutes in advance is enough). At 11AM, the train left direction the lower Sibambe station. After 20 minutes, we reached the famous Devil’s Nose ZigZag, where the train was on a tiny railway with cliffs on the side. The view was nice but not as impressive as advertised. The real attraction is the engineering realisation to build this, but not being into trains at all, we weren’t very impressed.
Once down, the train stopped at a mirador to enjoy the view on the mountain for 15 minutes. After what, we went back to the Sibambe station where we stayed for a long hour to checkout a tiny museum and watch some local dances. We finally went back in the train to go back up to the city where we arrived at 13:30PM.
Overall, we wouldn’t recommend to do it since it’s 33$/person and not that crazy, but if you have time or you like train, check-it out. Also, the seating matters, but you can’t predict which side will be the right one in advance. If you don’t like your seat, ask the staff to change carriage, they don’t really care as long as everyone have one.
Walking in the city 🚶
The next day, we woke up with calm and walked around the place before our transfer to Guayaquil at 1PM. After checking-out, we went to the Puente Negro at 5 minutes walk away. Nothing crazy to see beside an old bridge built for railway, funny to dare walking on it!
After that, we took some ramdom streets and scored a cheap almuerzo in a local place, before heading back to the hotel.
Restaurants 🍲
- Cafe del Tren Alausi: Basic food for a good price, but nothing crazy.
- Cafeteria Estacion del Tren: Decent almuerzo for 3.5$ with traditional homemade food.
Read Next ⏭️
Our 2 days stay in Guayaquil, check again Baños and surroundings, or go back to the main Ecuador post.