I left the
hostel at 5am and walked the icy block and a half to the Amtrak station for the
5.41 train to Santa Fe (peculiar how precise the timetable is when the trains are invariably up
to 2 hours late). Several goods trains rattled past - over 130 per day pass
through this station - before the Southwest Chief from LA en route to Chicago
pulled into the station.
The air
outside was freezing in the early morning darkness and the small group of
passengers - myself ,a Sikh man in a faded blue turban, another Australian
backpacker, several American women and a young Amish couple - the man chatty
and smiling, the woman quiet and reserved -
were glad to finally board the train. The Amish woman double-bonneted,
putting her stiff black travelling hat over the identical white one she had
worn in the waiting room. They were obviously blessed in the kitchen department
too, as her husband's bowl cut was slightly longer and more even than usual.
Having had
little sleep the night before I attempted to doze until I gave in to the
incessant announcements and went to the dining car for breakfast. I was seated
opposite a man and woman from close to my destination of Santa Fe - he not
particularly friendly and she raising her voice every time she spoke to me as
soon as she heard I was Australian, Like
almost all food in America, the breakfast was unnecessarily sweet and I would
have loved a dab of David's emergency vegemite from the hostel in Flagstaff.
Leaving the
hamlet of Gallup, we rode through endless vistas of valleys leavened by pleated mesas -
snow-covered to the south and clear to the north save for patches of frozen
melt. Just after Milan the train ran
alongside a band of jet black volcanic rock, fissured and broken like the ugly
mouth of some Hadean monster.
Every
journey needs some drama and in this case it was supplied by all the toilets
running out of water and backing up. The only exception was the one in the cafe
car. The observed American unwillingness to get involved in unpleasant
situations meant that the train staff
were initially unaware of the problem (which doesn't say much for their
sense of smell).
The ‘rear’ guard informed me tartly that
"this always happens in New Mexico" and proceeded to lock off all the
restrooms - considering there was another 14 hours or so until Chicago, I was
glad I was de-training in Lamy.
Lamy is
another story. Originally I was scheduled to have a two-hour wait here for my
twenty minute shuttle to Santa Fe, but Amtrak had thoughtfully reduced this to
only one hour by holding the train back.
(c)FMPDH 2012
