My night at the Hotel Ferrocarril was a bit on the scary side. After going to bed, I was sleeping soundly when about 2 am I was awakened by someone pounding on the door. I assumed that it was a drunk knocking on the wrong door (or a potential burglar?). So I didn't open the door. The banging on the door got louder with yelling in incomprehensible language. Finally I did get up before the insistent door bangers broke down the door. Three men came in, two in uniform. It turned out to be the police or some sort secret agents. For the next hour or so I was interrogated for some unknown reason. My lack of Spanish didn't speed up the progress. One of the men wrote down all of my answers to all sorts of irrelevant questions like " What was your grandmothers maiden name", etc. Apparently there was some paperwork glitch when checking into the hotel. I was getting worried that I could be arrested and dragged off to some unknown fate, but after the long question and answer session, the men seemed satisfied and left, to my great relief. It took a while to get a little more sleep for what was left of the night, and there were no further consequences.
In the morning 2-8-2 183 pulled into the station with the 2-car charter train that would take us to the spectacular Ipala loops and into El Salvador.
Having a charter train, we were able to make a number of runbys on this scenic line
Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 03/26/2021 09:59AM by Olaf Rasmussen.