First Person: El Nino Slams Peru

Just getting to the little town of Santa Teresa, Peru, illustrates the nearly complete breakdown in the infrastructure that El Nino has created throughout South America.

Normally, there are roads that lead into the jungle town, as well as a relatively smooth operating train system. Now, after a massive avalanche of mud the roads are washed out and the trains aren't running normally. In fact, on the day we visited, ours was the first train in days to try out the tracks after they were covered in rocks and mud loosened by a torrential El Nino storm.

We chartered a small engine to make the 18-km trip from Aguas Caliente, near Machu Picchu.

It took more than an hour, picking our way through shaky sections of track; finally, we stopped in Santa Teresa, just short of where the tracks were crumpled by the redirected raging river.

On the way back, our engine was frantically flagged down a few kilometers outside of Santa Teresa; more huge boulders had rolled down the mountain--and the tracks were damaged, bent so far that they could not be easily repaired. The regular passenger train from Aguas Caliente, making its first run in days, had to turn back.

After sitting in the jungle for about half-an-hour, our conductor convinced the stationmaster (via a crank-phone on a wire) that we coul shimmy through.

As we approached, one of the train engineers accompanying us got out to eyeball our wheels; I looked out and saw the tracks had bent about 20 or 25 degrees.

We slowed to a crawl, and the train rattled and shook like a chainsaw as we inched over the damaged section of track.

Our wheels stayed on, though...and we finally made it back.

Had we not returned, our little engine would not have been back to lead out the main trains from Machu Picchu back to Cuzco; hundreds of tourists would have been stranded as well. It is like that all over South America; there are few alternatives to firmly-entrenched travel operations -- and El Nino has caused a slowdown that will reverberate throughout the economy of those countries long after the warm-water pool has finally migrated away.