You Can Ride the Devil’s Nose Train in Ecuador Again
If you’re a train enthusiast, Ecuador has really yanked at your emotions. There were no options, then some major ones, then nothing again for a while. The train crossing much of the country between the two largest cities was a signature infrastructure project from a former administration that created a lot of jobs, then it got suspended during the pandemic and never came back. There’s one bit of positive news in 2025 though: the Devil’s Nose Train I rode last decade is running again.
There was a time when people rode trains all over Ecuador, from the capital of Quito to Otovalo, Cuenca, and the coastal port of Guayaquil. More than 60 trains a day departed from the main station in southern Quito.
Then came the age of the automobile, which killed off the trains in a lot of places in the Americas, from much of the U.S. down to Patagonia. Compounding the problem for Ecuador though was the terrain: this is a land of steep, high mountains. Building the railways in the first place was daunting enough. Constantly clearing the rockslides and broken tracks after natural disasters required more resources than the government was willing to spend.
Riding the Devil’s Nose Train Again
So over time the journeys got chopped up into smaller pieces or disappeared altogether. One of those pieces is worth experiencing just for the ride: the Devil’s Nose train (Nariz del Diablo) down a very steep mountain to the bottom. Here’s a video I put together from when I was on it. (Not high-def back then, sorry.)
This famous train journey is unique because of the engineering challenges the builders faced (ones that took the lives of some 2,500 workers) and it includes one novel solution. At one point the train goes around a bend and then comes to a stop at tracks that end. At that point the tracks are switched and the train proceeds down the mountain facing the opposite direction: the previous back of the train is now the front. This enables it to tackle a much steeper grade than it could have otherwise. (You can see that transition in the video above.)
Soon it arrives at a renovated station in the narrow canyon, which is a place you can actually spend the night if the lodge is open again. When I went I saw that there was a package including the train down and back, lodging, and two meals for a quite reasonable $50 per person.
Regular day visitors get a bite at a panorama snack bar up some steep stairs, where there’s also a museum. Local community people perform traditional dances on the train platform. And there’s a woman with a llama for photo ops. Sure, it’s kinda cheesy, but fun.
For a short period in time, after the government spent billions on track upgrades and new rolling stock, there was a train running between Quito and near Guayaquil that you could book as a passenger journey. They didn’t really plan it out very well though and there were no great hotels to stay at along the way like you have in Peru on their routes. It ran from 2014 to 2020, but never really got much traction thanks to terrible marketing and publicity and the lack of tourism infrastructure at the stops. They should have changed course and turned it into a regular passenger line that all travelers could use, including locals going to see family, like you see with the Maya Train in Mexico.
That never happened though and when the pandemic hit, the train stopped running and never started back up again. I’m sure there’s been some track damage since then and the current adminstration doesn’t have the fixes anywhere near the top of its priority list. Too bad since for a brief while it was one of the world’s great train journeys, through the “Route of the Volcanoes,” from sea level to 3,000 meters coming from Guayaquil.
I’m not sure if any of the partial routes will open. When I rode the Devil’s Nose train I first took a train ride from Quito to Cotopaxi and saw new government initiatives in action. There was a spruced-up station with an attractive new cafe serving good coffee, a room explaining the history of railroads in Ecuador, and an introductory film about the train system here in two languages. The people working at the station and on the trains were bilingual and sporting nice Tren Ecuador uniforms with a cool logo. Now the Tren Ecuador website is gone so all the staffers probably are too.
We clattered out of the city, past factories and homes, and climbed up the hills to a point where we could look across park lands and a valley to mountains dusted with snow on the other side. When we got to Machachi station, a brass band was playing to welcome everyone. No, this wasn’t a special occasion — they did that for every arrival back then.
The current sad state of the train system won’t give you reason enough to visit Ecuador, but this is in both of my books: The World’s Cheapest Destinations because it’s a travel bargain and A Better Life for half the price because it’s a very reasonable place to settle down. Even if you’re not trying to live to 100 in Vilcabamba, this is one of the cheapest places to live in the world — with a good quality of life.
If You Want to Ride a Train in Ecuador
The Devil’s Nose train is currently running three times a day between Wednesday and Sunday, plus public holidays. The last trip is at 2:00 p.m. The whole round trip is roughly 2.5 hours, down and back.
I’m not seeing it offered yet with international day tour companies Viator or GetYourGuide, so you’ll need to book direct with a local company. Try Original Ecuador or Metropolitan Touring. Some Ecuador tour companies have added this back into their multi-day packages on the mainland.
