The Steam Route

One list of GREAT THINGS TO DO IN VALDIVIA includes a ride on El Valdiviano, a steam-powered train transporting passengers to three towns along the Calle-Calle River. Unfortunately, the train only operates during summer months; fortunately, one day remained to climb aboard. I signed up.

A Bit of History

The history of trains in Chile is a bumpy one. In the 1870s, the first tracks were laid in an ambitious plan to connect Iquique in the north to Puerto Montt in the south. In the early 1900s, the line reached Puerto Montt, but its glory was short-lived. The country’s complicated terrain coupled with the rise of bus and air transportation for passengers and trucks for freight caused a decline in train use, and today most stretches of the line are abandoned.

Powered by coal and water, the Valdiviano takes passengers back to the golden years, when the railway enabled the transport of livestock, lumber, agricultural products, and passengers to the central region. Our engine, Number 620, was built in 1913 in Chile, using a Scottish design. It weighs 48,500 tons. Only 12 of its type remain, and the Valdiviano is considered a national monument. The cars came from Germany, and rumor has it that after World War II swastika emblems had to be removed from them …

Food and More Food

Once all were aboard, the train chugged between the Calle-Calle, which resembles a long lake, and hillsides of eucalyptus stands and native pines. We made three stops along the way. Huellelhue consists of one dusty street. Venders had set up shaded kiosks and sold skewered meat and other traditional fast foods, fruits and drinks, crafts and knit clothes, pies and additional sweets. Passengers flocked to the stands, looking and buying. I tried a cup of melon chunks — tasty and safe. Pishuinco is equally tiny but a bit more spread out. Similar offerings tempted us there.

We remained at the final stop, Antilhue, for two hours. This was a bigger town, with several streets crisscrossing on both sides of the train stop. All but one street were unpaved, homes mostly wooden and modest, with sloping zinc roofs, and there were a few small grocery stores, but the focal point of the afternoon was an earthen plaza surrounded by permanent stands, where meals and other fare were sold. I opted for outdoor-oven-roasted lamb, accompanied with potatoes (Chile’s main starch), and a salad of shredded lettuce and tomato.

The Cueca

As we ate, folkloric dancers — the women wearing puffy-sleeved blouses and wide skirts, the men in cowboylike hats, short jackets and spurred boots — performed the cueca, Chile’s lively national dance. It seems to symbolize a courting ritual between roosters and hens, with ample twirling of white handkerchiefs, all accompanied by voice, guitar, accordion, and tambourine. When it was time to leave, we filed out of the plaza while the master-of-ceremonies continued to introduce Chile’s cueca dancers.

In spite of my being on another side of the world and in a distant time from when I as a child would visit my grandparents in a railroad town outside Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, one thing doesn’t change — the urge for people near the tracks to wave and smile and wonder as the train passes by.