Childhood Dreams

When I was four, my favourite TV programme was not Mickey Mouse, or any other kiddies programme (although thunderbirds did come close). Rather, it was a BBC series called "Great Railway Journeys of the World", which featured various personalities undertaking train trips in different parts of the world. For my fifth birthday, my grandfather gave me the book of the series - I still have it with me back in Denmark. Well, today, twenty three years later, I finally fulfilled what was only a dream for me as a child, by completing one of those train trips.

The train trip from Lima to Hauncayo, deep in the heart of the andes, is an absolute stunner, and fully deserved to be included in the BBC series. Starting at sea level in Lima´s beautiful old Desamparados Station, in the heart of the city, it first rolls out of the city through poor shanty towns, and across the sandy coastal Peruvian desert. And then suddenly you come to the foothills, and next thing you know you are trundling along at the bottom of a 3000m deep river canyon.

But the first signs that this was not your average train trip came soon after, when the train stopped at a small station in the middle of this deep canyon. The engine unhooked, and moved onto another track, turned around on the turntable, and went to what was formerly the back carriage, and hooked on. And then away we went up, up, up into the mountains. This was the first of many unique features - at times the track would disappear into the hillside, spiral around, and come out in the other direction - a 180 degree turn, inside the hill! In other places, where it got really steep, the train would stop, reverse up a zig-zag to gain more height for a while, and then carry on in the normal direction again. And of course, there was a myriad collection of tunnels and bridges - at times you would explode out of a tunnel into a light, onto to find yourself on a bridge high, high above a deep canyon. Absolutely spectacular.

But the real highlight was the "top" - the station of La Galeria - at 4781m (15,600ft) above sea level, it is the highest train station in the world, and, of course, left us utterly breathless. La Galeria, sitting on the continental divide, represents our highest point. If I was a drop of water, I could either flow to the pacific, 150km to the west, or the Atlantic, 4000km to the east. One famous diginatory once described it as the only place where you could pee in two oceans at the same time!

Being 85% water, I guess we were faced with the same choice - return to the Pacific, from which we had just come four hours earlier, or take the long route to the Atlantic. The choice of course, was easy - its the Atlantic for us! And began our trip down the Amazon, all the way to the sea (hopefully!)

After such a stunning start to the trip, it was kind of inevitable that the rest of it wouldn´t be quite so exciting - a much more mellow descent over about six or eight hours through La Oroya, following the Rio Mantoro down to Huancayo, located in a beautiful open valley, with a couple of nice big snow capped peaks in the background. We arrived shortly after dusk, tired and hungry but happy. The trip was everything that I had hoped for - it certaintly felt very satisfying to have completed a journey that I had read and dreamt about all those years before.