TO MAKE A LIVING

Ride El Tren Macho from Huancayo to Huancavelica in Peru’s Central Andes.

In Peru, you have only one opportunity to take a real, honest-to-goodness local train: El Tren Macho – Sale cuando quiere, llega cuando puede (It leaves when it wants to, it arrives when it can) – between Huancayo and Huancavelica.

With Peru’s privatization of its railroads in 1998, this line is the only one with accessible prices, serving the local communities, and supporting their economies by allowing vendors aboard. All of the other passenger services these days in that Andean country are luxury services between Arequipa, Puno, Cuzco, and Machu Picchu.

The Tren Macho, though, is for ordinary folk and ordinary travelers. Inhabitants of the pueblos scattered along its route and foreigners journey together unsegregated. This is a heck of a ride, with a breathtaking landscape and vendors vying each other for your business.

Wending through the central Andes, it is actually the shortest, most direct way to get from Huancayo to Huancavelica (or vice-versa). Its 128-kilometer route runs along the Mantaro and Ichu rivers, passing through 38 tunnels and over 15 bridges. The Huancayo station is at Chilca (3,240 meters above sea level). The lowest point of the line is at Mariscal Cáceres (2,819 m.a.s.l.). It then climbs to its highest point at Huancavelica (3,676 m.a.s.l.). Between Huancayo and Huancavelica, there were 25 stops.

In 2008, work began to modernize these rail lines. A major project was to change the rails from narrow gauge to standard gauge. Locomotives were also upgraded. Service resumed in March 2023. El Tren Maho now makes 11 stops along the way.

The present schedule is:

Monday, Wednesday, Friday, Saturday

from Chilca (Huancayo) – leave 6:30 a.m. – arrive 8:30 a.m.

from Cuenca (Huancavelica) – leave 1 p.m. – arrive 2:45 p.m.

Consult locally about how early you should arrive at the station to ensure a ticket to ride. Eat, chat with your seatmates — and experience the Peru behind the tourism façade.

So, come join me in this train journey.

Aaaalllll Aboooooard!

Safe Journeys!

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16 September 1998 / Huancayo to Huancavelica, Peru

In the lightening of morning, I arrive at the station. Pots steam on stands in front. People hustle for the line serpentining from the ticket window. They wobble and tottle beneath their bundles and boxes. The damp chill bites toes and noses.

Another queue winds from the locked patio gate. On the track awaits our ride: five orange passenger cars, along with two freighters, all emblazoned with the name ENAFER (meaning Empresa Nacional de Ferrocarriles, National Train Company).

At 6 a.m., that gate is opened. The rush is on to the numbered cars, to the numbered seats. Passengers jostle past passengers, past vendors. Within, folks stow their baggage overhead and under the cushioned seat benches facing one another.

I arrive to my seat grouping and discover that the woman that was behind me in line has the seat next to the window. Her box blocks the space between the benches. Her hand brushes her red sweater and then rests on her wool skirt. Her scuffed shoes rest atop a bundle. Her young son in my place. The man in our grouping complains to her. I search for a space for my battered knapsack. As I wait for my seat, I am butted by passing travelers and sellers.

The train jolts with the connection of the engine to the cars. Everyone in this vagón has settled in at last. A woman comes through, selling breads from a rice sack. Another mujer calls El Correo, Primicia, holds the day’s papers up.

The blast of the horn. Young boy walks by us, Toilet paper, 50 céntimos.

Three clangs of the station bell. The horn blows and slowly we pull away. Cold air drifts through open windows.

From a bucket, a woman sells hot yucca with picante. From buckets a man sells mugs of spiced apple-quinoa drink.

A man with withered legs hobbles down the aisle and sits on the edge of a bench. He lays the crutches against his thigh. He adjusts a white ball cap on his short black hair, then smooths his bright blue sweater with his thick dark fingers. A bag hangs around his neck. He begins to sing huayños.

The city streets roll by. Then small ranchos with plots of potatoes and new corn separated by adobe walls click by.

After a few songs, his sales pitch comes

 For a Chinese tea caramelo

to cure your sinusitis

arthritis, bad stomach

Or for those skinny ones

or ones with no energy

or those who are so tall

50 céntimos for four hard candies

Now, look, no-one is going

to be driven into poverty

It’s only 50 céntimos

And for those who don’t collaborate

I’ll sing another huayño

People quietly laugh in their sleeves, their shawls.

And in the meantime, another vendor passes, displaying rat poison and mothballs.

The seller of miracle caramelos continues his pitch:

For the skinny, it fattens them

  For the fat, fattens them more

And in the meantime, a mute vendor passes with crackers and motions, Five packs, one sol. He stops and rubs the candyman atop his ball-capped head, arms waving as if to say, “You’re stealing the show. I’ve gotta sell, too!”

And that seller of caramelos continues his pitch:

And for the mute, it gives them speech

Just 50 céntimos for four candies

Outside our window, the Mantaro Valley ends and we enter the mountains. Ravines drop to icy rivers.

The woman next to me keeps looking over my shoulder, at my words appearing on this page.

A porter walks up the aisle, his arms loaded with steaming plates of chicken and rice. Only three and a half soles.

The vendors get to roughhousing. Then the candy, the cracker, and the quinoa drink sellers move their business to the next car back.

Our course follows a river. We hang partway down the canyon wall.

At the first stop, the yucca woman leaves with her now-empty basket. More vendors board and take their turns at making a living aboard this train.

A ginseng tea man steps onto the stage first:

This is not Chinese or Japanese

 This is specially imported

from Korea

It will keep your insides clean

Just like you wash yourself

after a day of work

You should wash yourself

after a meal

A cup of this

one packet

Buy one for you, your

wife, your children

A special offer

three for five soles

Next, a blind fiddle player sings huayños. He stumbles down the aisle, feeling his way with his staff, violin and bow in one hand. The tips gather in his hand and into his pocket. One man requests a song and further down this car, he begins another, leaning against the seat as the train makes a short stop at a grouping of houses.

Out in a field, a man leads pair of oxen. The mother next to me falls asleep, her two-year-old cradled in her arms. Our train travels through shadow. Patches of sunlight peek through the east-facing windows.

And after each town, the conductor punches tickets and collects the fares of new arrivals.

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Izcuchaca

The blind man leaves, his now-silent fiddle wrapped in a blue plastic bag. Women come aboard with baskets of empanada and bread, with bowls of roast pork and corn.

With a horn blast, we leave that market behind. We continue our journey through the mountains scattered with maguey, nopal, and scrub trees. We traverse blackening tunnels and emerge into sunlight.

Past our sister train pulled on a siding. Some of its riders are out on the vestibules. Others have stuck their heads out windows.

This is a quiet journey. Passengers are engaged in muted conversations. Or they are sleeping … or gazing out the window …

The porters in their red and black vests still walk back with four or five plates of food balanced on their arms and in their hands. A tres-cincuenta, they call. They walk to the front, towards the dining car with empty plates.

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Mariscal Cáceres

The National Police come on board. Some walk through, others take position at the end of each car. They ask each passenger for their identification. The head of this operation checks the cards and calls off the name to a young assistant with a list of fugitives in hand. The process is slow.

The sellers, though, are not deterred. Some women offer gelatina con flan, others have bread. A young boy swings a silver bucket full of bottles of chicha. And the porters still rush back and forth with their plates of food.

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Acoria

Eucalyptus forests and farm rows climb and cling to the sides of mountains that rise into the robin-egg sky. The clear, moss-bottomed river rushes, the frothing rapids foaming over rocks where ducks alight with a splash.

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Alausí

The mother and son get off here. She shoves and shuffles their bundles and boxes.

We then return to the countryside of ravines and stone-walled terraces.

Two women sit in my seat grouping, taking a rest from their sales. One has a basket of bread, the other a bucket of chuños. They speak in rapid, clicking, shushing Quechua. The train clicks and shushes as it nears our destination.

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Glossary

caramel – hard candy

céntimos – cents

chicha – corn beer

chuño – a variety of potato from the altiplano of Peru and Bolivia that can be dried

gelatin con flan – gelatin with custard

huayños – a traditional Peruvian musical genre

mujer – woman

nopal – prickly pear cactus

picante – hot sauce

sol (plural: soles) – the national currency of Peru

tres-cincuenta – three-fifty

vagón – train car