|
|
Article: A BREATHTAKING TRAIN RIDE TO ARGENTINA'S PAMPAS IN THE CLOUDS.(Getaways)
- Article from:
- Seattle Post-Intelligencer
- Article date:
- December 16, 1999
CopyrightCOPYRIGHT 1999 Seattle Post-Intelligencer. All rights reserved. Reproduced with the permission of the Dialog Corporation by Gale Group. This material is published under license from the publisher through the Gale Group, Farmington Hills, Michigan. All inquiries regarding rights should be directed to the Gale Group. (Hide copyright information)
|
A powerful locomotive belches diesel smoke as some 600 tourists, still sleepy at dawn, clamber aboard the red-and-yellow passenger cars. Wheels creak and soon we are riding a narrow-gauge railway up to a 14,000-foot plain near Argentina's border with Bolivia and Chile.
Welcome aboard the Train to the Clouds. It doesn't suggest the mystery of the Orient Express, nor proffer the quaintness of the English ``Train at the End of the World'' in southernmost South America. But it is breathtaking.
Rising up a rocky ridge against a stark blue sky, the train chugs through a thinning atmosphere along a twisting track through 1,270 curbs, 21 tunnels, and across 13 ...