Fact One: Last night we slept in a cutting, on iron sleepers, between steel tracks of a disused railway. Fact Two: Tonight I watched a passenger train rumble across the Rio Negro.
Fact Three: My map shows this line to be one and the same to the one that we slept on last night. We had wondered as to why, given the world wide demand for ferrous metals, why the disused ties and rails had not been salvaged or stolen.
Time for some answers. The railways finally closed in ’88, then reopening again in’95, $30m is being invested in their resurrection, using Paraguayan wooden sleepers, funded by Russia, in lieu of debt repayment. A rolling programme of replenishment that is heading for last night’s camping. That’s change.
