Argentina Trip 2023

Sally and I travelled to Argentina in the fall of 2023. Our primary purpose was to ride one of the last narrow-gauge steam passenger trains in South America--"La Trochita" or "The Old Patagonia Express" made famous by a travelogue of the same name by Paul Theroux. The private excursion we were on was billed as probably the last tour of the entire length of La Trochita due to the failing infrastructure. Little did we realize how accurate this was.

We began and ended our trip in Buenos Aires which we enjoyed very much. Our tour group flew to Santa Clara de Bariloche -- a beautiful resort town on a lake in Patagonia. From there we took an antique broad-gauge train to the small (almost ghost) town of Ingeniero Jacobacci which was named after an Italian-born engineer who did a lot for the development of the rail line. Ingeniero Jacobacci is also the northern-most terminus of the 750-mm gauge "La Trochita" steam railway made famous by the travelogue "The Old Patagonia Railway" by Paul Theroux.

The travel on the narrow gauge La Trochita was quaint, scenic, and pretty rugged. Facilities were poor and the ride pretty rugged - even though we seldom traveled more than 10 mph. We were delighted whenever we encountered western-style flush toilets.

We did spend several nights at a very nice hotel in a tourist town in Patagonia named El Bolsón. We were lucky to be there when they had a heritage day featuring a parade by local gaucho families.

Without getting too heavily into the details, the low point in the trip came when our tourist steam train derailed where an embankment had eroded and dumped the entire train on its side and nearly upside-down on the side of the embankment. The antique wooden carriages had lots of windows and had wood-burning stoves since it was still very cold out. Sally and I were extremely lucky--we were together in a lightly populated car and, while we landed on broken windows, the windows on the other side of the car (and above us) did not break. The stove did not catch anything on fire and the fast-working train crew managed to break a window to let the smoke out and broke down the doors to come and rescue us.

Sally and I were unhurt beyond a few bruises. Even my camera was essentially undamaged. Others were not so lucky. There were broken bones and lacerations. Our tour group of 50 had about 8 people that had moderate to serious injury. One member from Britain had some health challenges to begin with, and eventually perished after months in the hospital--if not strictly because of the accident, then the accident certainly made his last months of life extremely miserable.

That was scheduled to be the last day riding the antique train and we returned by modern train to Buenos Aires the next day. Word is that the railroad has finally salvaged the over-turned steam locomotive after many months.

We had a nice last few days in Buenos Aires and returned home--glad to be alive and unhurt.