Storyline: Buenos Aires to Lima Nov 2017
Preparing for out next trip, which includes The Ghan (a luxury tourist train that carries enthusiasts between Adelaide on the south coast of Australia over 2900 km through the desolate outback to Darwin on the north coast), brought back vivid memories of a fantastic journey we made in South America some 15 months ago. We probably won’t have time to write a lot about it now, but it is that specific train journey which actually triggered the entire trip. No, not the desire to take this train, but just the opposite.
As always, I had ideas and plans. I was making a detailed plan for traveling through Peru and Bolivia in June/July 2017 by ourselves. I relied on a 12 hour train ride to take us from Cusco, the gateway to the Sacred Valley and Machu Picchu to Puno on Lake Titicaca. However, there was conflicting information online between the official Perurail website, Trip Advisor and other reputable sites. The regular train from Cusco to Puno was discontinued and a new luxurious train had just been launched. There was another train but only for locals – tourists were not permitted. The new train was called the Belmond Andean Explorer and cost (at the time) was from about US$1500 pp to US$2500 pp, according to the Perurail website. There were no other train options. This was ridiculously expensive. In Peru? Really! For an 18 hour trip of which 8 hours were parked overnight in a siding. Something didn’t add up. Our expectations were for a much less expensive world out there. So, I gave up on Peru and Bolivia for that year, although we had already visited the travel clinic and had our vaccines done. Instead we flew to Bulgaria and did a train trip through Romania.
Coming back from Europe in August, I began flirting with the South America itinerary again. I continued asking Mr. Google about train options for the Cusco to Puno leg. A link to a tour company called Rail South America came to my attention. It was an unpretentious website with a few tours…
And…that’s how we met Peter!
Rail South America was and still is a small boutique company specializing in tours in South America that involve all kind of trains. Have you watched Chris Tarrant’s “Extreme Railway Journeys” show? You may have seen the Bolivian Autoferro (a bus that runs on rails) and the Ecuadorian Tren Crucero among others. They have been on my list for some time. These were included in some of the tours on the website. One tour grabbed my attention: “From Buenos Aires to Lima by train”. The tour was for 21 days, included a few interesting trains and…the Andean Explorer. At about US$5900 pp it wasn’t cheap for us. But 21 days covering 3 countries, including among other great stops, the Tren a las Nubes (train to the clouds) in northern Argentina, Lake Titicaca, the iconic Salar de Uyuni Salt Flats in Bolivia, Machu Pichu and the unaffordable 18 hours aboard the Belmond Andean Explorer made us think. It also covered part of my intended itinerary for Peru and Bolivia in reverse order. We were just entering retirement – Alex was completing what we thought may be his final contract (he’s still not sure about that, 15 months later). We had a budget. We had just spent a little less than a month in the two cheapest countries in Eastern Europe. But a tour!? We have never had been tour fans. Never been on a tour as a matter of fact (and despite our great experience, haven’t been on another – yet). We prefer to make our own tours. It is much cheaper and we can spend more time travelling, at our own pace, and do our own things. Call it Diana’s brand (with Alex’s stamp). Yet this was tempting. It would be an introduction to South America in a comfortable environment.
But how do you go about obtaining reliable references for such a small company? The Trip Advisor community didn’t know them. As a matter of fact, Trip Advisor did not accept reviews about any tour companies, because after the trip I tried to write one.
So, I started with e-mail. Peter responded immediately. He was the tour director and the owner of the company. I had millions of questions. E-mail after e-mail, he gave us the confidence of being a legit company. Then we phoned… Then we skyped… And at the end we went!
This tour was the highlight of our lives! It was exciting. It was spectacular! And perhaps it set the bar for a tour way too high, but we will forever be thankful to this little link Google brought in my search results and to the fact that I bothered clicking on it.
We’ll finish this storyline when we come back from our upcoming South Pacific trip. The rest of this post is about our experience with Belmond Andean Explorer. Because this train is the origination of our extraordinary experience in November 2017.
The Belmond Andean Explorer is a cooperative venture between the Peruvian national rail company – Perurail and the company that operates many luxury train routes such as the Venice-Simplon Orient Express and the Royal Scotsman. The rolling stock was originally commissioned for a route along Australia’s east coast It was moved to Peru and refitted for this route. The décor is retro-opulent (my description – and I’m sure there are those who can properly name the style) and is tasteful and comfortable. Three meals are served on the Puno-Cusco route – lunch, dinner and breakfast – and they are memorable. The locally-sourced menu was developed by Peru’s Michelin-starred chef Diego Muñoz.
At the time we wrote on Facebook: This was and probably will be the most decadent train trip in our lives. And now 15 months later we still think the same.
We don’t know how their rides are now in terms of customers willing to pay such a price. And since then Perurail has reinstated the regular tourist train that costs much less. But at the time we, the tourists, were outnumbered by the staff. The capacity in the configuration of our train as far as I can remember, was for about 50 passengers. There were only 19, including our group of 7. And there were over 30 (34 comes to mind) onboard staff.
The train is too long for Puno train station, so it originates from the Lake Titicaca harbour terminal. We arrived about 20 minutes before departure, and after dropping off our luggage were guided into an old staging warehouse for the cargo vessels that used to ply the lake. A violin was playing as we were served Spanish cava.
When the time arrived, we were led to one of the lounge cars. We were greeted by cheerful staff members and a baby grand piano playing.
More drinks and munchies were served as the orientation session began. After half an hour or so, each couple was led to their cabin, staff carrying our backpacks. Really! “What do you mean I can’t carry my backpack?” “You are here to enjoy and relax… We do the work.” Hmmm, we definitely are not used to this.
We settled down, finished our drinks (it still was morning and we had already quite a few of them) and went to the observation car. What a lovely scenery the train was taking us through!
Yet there was something shocking for me. It was the contrast between what we saw outside and the luxury inside this train. If the saying “a picture is worth thousands of words” is true, this is the best illustration. The photos throughout this post and the photo gallery at the end of the post says it all.
The most shocking in timing was the Juliaca town market. Just as we sat for our sumptuous lunch, the train cut through the market. Literally!
The tracks run down the middle of the road that the vendors had filled with their stalls. Apparently, it is normal for that part of the world. As the train was approaching, they all ran to both sides of the road, pulling their wares from the track and holding back their overhanging awnings.
I wish we had known that and were on the observation planform to take a video. However, perhaps we would have been discouraged at that time by the onboard security guards. The photos we took still show the contrast though. Makes one think and realize how fortunate we are.
The scenery was gradually getting richer towards Cusco as the occasional tractor or even a tricycle or another vehicle occupied the fields. Peru was definitely much greener and richer than Bolivia.
Then further down the tracks it was a laundry time…
We stopped for half an hour at La Raya at 4350m (just over 14,000ft) to observe the glacier and of course do some shopping.
Did I mention the number of staff? There were guards at both ends of the train, that we hadn’t noticed before, since our contact was mainly with the customer-facing staff.
Time for another aperitif, pisco sour for me please. And then it was dinner time. The dinner was outstanding as was the lunch. The dark fell upon the mountains and there was nothing else to do but head to our cabin. While we had our dinner, the staff had been working.
Our cabin was transformed to a bedroom… And what a luxury bathroom floor… And the shower pressure! Better than in any hotel, with good temperature for hot water.
By the time we prepared for our night, the train had stopped. This way we would have a quiet night undisturbed by the clickety-clack and movement of the train, and would not miss out on the scenery while sleeping.
When the train started again at 5:30am it was a wake-up time, followed by a breakfast as we slowly entered the Cusco area. We gathered again in the lounge and staff brought our backpacks and the souvenirs they had for us.
Time to leave this incredibly luxurious (for us) journey and say good-bye to the train’s staff – who were lined up on the platform applauding us as we left. It was embarrassing because it was us who should have been applauding them. Instead we shook hands with all of them. Thank you for the great service and for your generous smiles! It was exceptional!
We now see the tickets on Perurail website for this train are much cheaper. Perhaps Belmond realized they set the price way too high for what tourists were willing to pay for this region. We also know that this was the only such a train included in Peter’s Buenos Aires to Lima tour. He is now taking the groups with still luxurious, but not uber-luxurious Perurail Titicaca train.
And so, we were lucky to land on the Rail South America website and we could not have been happier that we met Peter Lauffer, the owner of the company and the director of our tour, who travelled with us and made it all so great and so easy! We were also happy to meet and spend all this time with our traveling companions, two Swiss couples. There were six of us, plus Peter on this trip and so it felt like a family. We still miss the experience and the people.
Oh, if it looks in our photos like all the houses in the cities we visited were unfinished, this is deliberately so. If a house is unfinished they pay only a fraction of the taxes. So only rich people and businesses put on the finishing touches. And if that appears very foreign, Alex has seen similar in Newfoundland where, for the same reasons, in many homes the front doors have no steps up to them.
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