After our lunchtime wander we took the Durango and Silverton Narrow Gauge Railroad down to the other end of the line, at Durango. If you want to know what steam travel in the Wild West was truly like then this is definitely one of the places to come. Steam engines have worked continuously on the line since the 1880s and all of the rolling stock is original. The 72 kilometre trip takes ages (and that’s going downhill!) and the stretch nearer to Durango, where the landscape flattens out a little, is relatively uninteresting (apart from the deer) but after quitting Silverton the railway faithfully follows the River Animus (its wonderful full Spanish name is ‘Animus Perditas’ – or the River of Lost Souls), including creeping along the sides of a series of very steep-sided gorges where it is probably better not to look directly down because there is nothing between you and the river to stop you becoming a lost soul. There is a photogenic stretch where the train turns back on itself and that’s where my illustration comes from but for much of this stretch the train seems to be literally teetering on the edge. On the way down I was excited to see plenty of evidence of beaver activity, in the form of gnawed trunks and dams constructions, though none of the animals themselves. A railroad town built to service the San Juan mining region, Durango has a lively buzz to it and a selection of good restaurants. This evening we ate fusion/Japanese.