I’m willing to admit that it wasn’t as bad as this photo might lead you to believe, but at the time it felt like we were being crushed to death in a diaper pail. That time we got on the wrong train, in a foreign country.
It was almost 30 years ago. I was still in my early 20’s, and my future ex-husband and I weren’t even engaged yet. There we were, young lovers, heading to Mexico to visit my former roommate Lisa, who was studying abroad in Guanajuato with a stop on the way in San Miguel de Allende. Even back then the beautiful colonial town was a haven for artistically inclined ex-pats.
To make the most out of our trip – and to do it as cheaply as possible – we flew to Texas first to visit my grandfather, drove a rental car to Laredo, and then followed the instructions as laid out in Lonely Planet: Mexico. We walked across the border and then hailed a taxi to take us to the train station where we were to buy tickets for the train to San Miguel de Allende. The Aztec Eagle was its name. I didn’t know that at the time. If I had, things might have turned out differently.
[s2If !current_user_can(access_s2member_level1)]
Only paid subscribers have access to our site’s lead stories, as well as the Convo Cafe. When you become a recurring subscriber, you will have full access to all lead stories as well as the entire website. Plus, you’ll have the option to receive email notifications of everything we post on aNewsCafe.com.
We look forward to you being part of aNewsCafe.com’s online family of paid subscribers. Your support helps us not just survive, but thrive and bring even more quality content to you by top-notch contributors and journalists about topics crucial to you, our region and our world.
Read more about our decision here.
Click here to subscribe!
Already a subscriber? Log in here.
[/s2If]
[s2If current_user_can(access_s2member_level1)]
Getting there was supposed to be a leisurely 19 hour journey on the train that would most likely be filled with other vacationing Americans who weren’t willing to pay the higher cost of plane fare, but wanted a more luxurious experience than a bus would offer. That was us, exactly.
The Lonely Planet guide book that had become our bible for the trip instructed us to ask for “Primera Clase billetes, por favor.” First Class tickets, please. Although for the life of me I can’t recall what it was supposed to cost, I remember that for the money, it was supposed to be worth it. Nicer bathrooms. Better food. More legroom. And Glenn needed the leg room. That man was all legs.
The train, according to the book, left at 7pm, and we would arrive early the next afternoon, refreshed, relaxed, in style. We could even get a sleeper car if we wanted with its own private toilet and sink. Maybe it even had air conditioning. Maybe it did, maybe it didn’t. We never found out.
El Estacion del Ferrocarril Nuevo Laredo Viejito from a 1959 postcard.
The taxi driver dropped us off, and we walked into the building. It seemed like we were really early, because there weren’t really any people hanging around inside the depot, and certainly no gringos like us. I walked up to the counter and said, “Dos billetas por San Miguel de Allende. Primera Clase, por favor.”
The man took my money and pushed a pair of tickets across the counter and said, “Solamente una clase, señora.” I was still a señorita, but I didn’t correct his grammar. However, he had corrected mine. It just didn’t sink in for awhile. He gave me some change (much more change than I was expecting to be honest), and pointed towards the tracks, where I could see the tail end of a train waiting.
I was probably still counting my change, remarking that the tickets cost much less than I was expecting (43,600 pesos, which was $7 each), and not really paying attention to my surroundings as we boarded the train. I remember thinking how lucky we were, that we probably had the whole train to ourselves at this point because we were so early.
The Aztec Eagle’s Lounge Car.
Then I got to the top step at the back of the train, and realized that we weren’t early. Quite the opposite, in fact. Almost every one of the 96 seats was occupied. The only two seats near each other were across the aisle from one another, a few rows in front of the bathroom, at the back of the car. Not wanting to give up the chance to be somewhat near each other, we hoisted our backpacks up onto the luggage racks on each side of the car, and sat down next to strangers. Two railroad employees sat directly behind me. One of them held a big flashlight.
I wish I had never found out what that flashlight was for. But I’m getting ahead of myself.
Our train looked pretty much just like this one.
So there we were, in deep confusion. This was not the train we were expecting. It wasn’t what we’d read about in Lonely Planet. Glenn got up and walked to the front of the crowded train car to see if the first class train car was in front of the one we were currently seated in, but when he came back it was with bad news. There were no more cars. This was it. That’s when it hit me. What the train station employee had said to me. He hadn’t said, “There’s only first class.” He’d said, “There’s only one class, lady.” And it wasn’t first class. This wasn’t the Aztec Eagle that we had been expecting, with private showers and a dining car, and porters in tuxedo jackets.
What we were expecting. The dining car on the Aztec Eagle.
We were on the wrong train. And it was already moving.
There was a lot going on at that moment, and we were somewhat paralyzed about what to do. Some of the things that we immediately discussed were the possibilities that either we’d been dropped off at the wrong station, or the information in the Lonely Planet guide was out of date and there was no longer the offering of a first class train favored by tourists with the extra cash to spend on amenities. Or maybe we didn’t ask the right questions of the ticket agent who’d sold us tickets for what appeared to be a 3pm local train heading for points south. Maybe if we’d spoken better Spanish, or had just waited instead of stepping up to the counter immediately, we would’ve been sold tickets for the 7pm speedy train with room for three times as many people, speeding three times faster towards our destination.
Mexico. Nuevo Laredo is at the top right. San Miguel de Allende is much further south, in the San Luis Potosi region.
So we just sat there, looking wide eyed at each other. as the train got underway. I reached across the aisle and grabbed his hand.
We sat like that, holding hands across the aisle, for about ten minutes, before some of the other passengers noticed that the sole non-Mexicans aboard this tiny regional train weren’t sitting together, but obviously wanted to. Initially I had even worked up the nerve to turn to my male seat mate and asked him using hand signals and my best Spanish if he would move to allow me to sit next to mi novio, he just turned and looked out the window and shrugged his shoulders. But he wasn’t able to ignore his fellow Mexicans, who started flipping him a lot of crap. I have no idea what they said, but after a few minutes he sighed deeply, got up from his seat, and traded with Glenn so we could sit together.
My train journey journal.
I wrote in my journal that the train “stinks like ripe cloth diapers and sweat.” Probably because we were so close to the bathrooms. After about an hour, I realized I had to use that bathroom. I got up, and one of the two railroad employees jumped up from his seat behind me and opened the door. So chivalrous. In the dim light I saw a rustic toilet that didn’t flush, and luggage piled up in the corner all the way to the ceiling. There was no light. There was no paper. There was no water. There was also a gaping hole where the door handle should’ve been. The railroad man shut the door, throwing me into total darkness, until he turned on the flashlight that he’d stuck through the hole. I vowed not to drink anything for the rest of the trip.
We formed a strategy to switch seats to get away from the bathroom as soon as the train stopped and people disembarked. Only that never happened. When we pulled into Monterey, the train was mobbed, with people jumping on before the train had even fully stopped. A handful of people tried to disembark, and almost didn’t make it, fighting their way through a crowd of 60-70 people that got on. There was shoving and shouting, and when the train took off again, there were 3 to 4 people crammed into seats designed for one.
We slept sitting straight up all night long, which was better than some others fared. Plenty of people were sleeping in the middle of the aisle, standing up. Those who were lucky enough to have seats could recline them. The one directly in front of us was broken. It reclined all the way until it rested on Glenn’s legs. We were the only people on the train car who couldn’t recline our seats, because the conductors behind us wouldn’t allow their own comfort to be compromised. But they did allow an old man with a fake leather jacket and cowboy hat to drape his entire body across the back of our seats for a few hours.
And that’s how it went, all night long.
In the early morning, Glenn wriggled out to go use the toilet. When he came back, he told me a tale that made him gag as he spoke. Remember “Welcome To The Shit Show” from months ago? Well it turns out that dogs aren’t the only ones capable of splattering a room with poop Jackson Pollock-style. Take one over burdened toilet, and combine it with the hurky jurky motion of a rickety old train, give it a few hours, and that’s what you end up with. Shit from floor to ceiling. I thought of all that luggage piled up in the corner, and threw up in my mouth a little. But Glenn really really needed to go. So he did what all the rest of the men were doing. He stepped out the rear door of the train and peed right off the back onto the tracks.
I renewed my vow not to eat or drink anything. Not that there was anything available. We had brought food and drinks in our backpacks, but those were stowed away, far out of our reach, across a sea of humans. Eventually, at about the 20 hour mark of our journey, we gave in to hunger and thirst, passing money out the window to a kid who hung off the side of the train when we pulled into a pueblo, purchasing coca colas and cookies before the train pulled out again thirty seconds later.
Vendors selling food & wares along the train tracks.
As we neared San Miguel de Allende late the next afternoon, we finally shoved our way through the herd, collected our backpacks, and got ready to fight our way against the tide of incoming flesh when we reached the station. We finally put our feet on solid ground 23 hours after we’d left Nuevo Laredo. An epic ride on the wrong train. And I had to pee.
I was inspired to tell you my wrong train story when a friend asked a few weeks ago about the cheapest way to travel to San Miguel de Allende, and I told her I’d done it for $7, but I wouldn’t do it again. Not only that, I couldn’t, because Mexico got rid of almost all of its passenger rail routes by the late 90’s. Hasta la vista, ferrocarril.
I hope you got a kick out of this travel tale, and find something to appreciate in the accompanying Wrong Train playlist of train tunes. If you’ve got a train tune I left out (or an epic travel fail story of your own) to share, I wanna hear it!
[/s2If]
