Day 163 – Wednesday 1st March 2006

I was pretty shagged by the time I reached Esquel at 7am so after checking in I had a quick nap before having a look around the town. My main reason for making my way to the town of Esquel was the Old Patagonian Express, or La Trochita. This is a railway that was built in the early 20th Century.

When I was just planning going travelling and working out places I wanted to visit, I read a book by Paul Theroux named “The Old Patagonian Express”. This is a travel book about Mr Theroux’s trip by train from Boston, USA to Patagonia, Argentina. He travelled on this railway line, and as a result I had to take a trip on it.

The railway line gradually fell in disrepair after the Government abandoned funding for it, but during the 1990′s it was given extra funding and reopened as a tourist destination in 1995. Although it has a main function as a tourist pull, it still remains the only means of transport for some of the local indigenous peoples, who rely on it to get in and out of Esquel. The entire line stretches about 400km north to El Maiten however the main tourist trip is a 22km jaunt to the next station and back.

The train gets the name La Trochita from the narrow guage of its tracks, and although I believe it was engineered and made by the Brits, I am not 100% certain. The station still retains an authenticity as it still has the station masters desk in the back room. As I stood taking photos of the station and the mountains in the background, the train came chugging along into the station, bringing back the morning tour. Perfect timing I must say. I had tickets for the afternoon trip and at 2pm I boarded the train and took up my snug seat in the carriage.

As the train set off we gradually and literally built up a head of steam and climbed to our top speed of about 30mph. We chugged along nicely, passing by the mountains, making it to Nahuel Pan about an hour later. 22km in the hour it was steady but by no means one of those Japanese express trains.

The station of Nahuel Pan was basically a strip of land, maybe 200m in length with about 5 buildings, each set back about 50m from the tracks. And that was it in terms of population. No other buildings to be seen. Only mountains. A true Patagonian outpost. This was the perfect opportunity to take some photos of the train, and it being a touch of history I did my best David Bailey impression and tried to give the moment some authenticity.

The return journey came and went pretty quickly as I fell asleep. Amazing that I can fall asleep on that cramped rickety old train, but not on the plush buses that I had spend the previous two nights on!