Ian Menendez is an experienced train rider, hitchhiker, and urban explorer from Argentina.

Some months ago, I was in the city of Rufino in Santa Fe province. I wanted to hop this train into Buenos Aires, across La Picasa Lake, and then across all the farmlands. I was in the tracks waiting, as everyone does. I waited ten hours, just taking pictures, and suddenly, I see the guy who drives the train. We started talking and whatnot, a pretty cool guy. He invited me to the locomotive, but I declined, because I was like, “Someone will see us, and they will fire the guy.”  Because here in Argentina, if you do something wrong, they will fire you instantly. But I asked if I can just hop in one of the wagons. like I do. He said, “Yeah.” I waited an extra hour, and then the train started.

One thing is, here trains are very slow. This train, a grainer, went 150 kilometers, and it took five hours. So it was a long, slow trip, but the views were pretty cool because it went through a lake. I think it's the only place in Argentina where it goes through a lake. In Argentina, most of the trains go through farmland and crops, so there's not much to see. Here, you see water, only water. And then it was very cold. It started raining as well. So I just went into my sleeping bag and slept most of the time.

The next day, I stopped in Buenos Aires province, in a city called Junín. I slept in an abandoned wagon there for the night, where I met a homeless person. He was like, “Stop making so much noise, someone will come here.” So I was like, “I will go to another place,” because he was a pretty sketchy person, you know, crusty. So I just went 200 meters and slept around some weeds. In the morning, I woke up and saw the train was departing. So I was like, “Oh, fuck!” I grabbed all my things, and in five minutes I hopped again. It was a different train, though. This one had rocks on top. It was an open-topped gondola car, so it was way easier.

The ride was way smoother, but it was shorter as well, 120 kilometers. The train went slow as well, because trains here in Argentina are not maintained. They don't want to spend money on the tracks. We’ve had the same tracks a hundred years, so rides are very bumpy. You can see the wagons go from side to side, so if you are standing in there, it’s pretty sketchy.

That train went to a small town called Cucha Cucha, where it started unloading the wagons. So I was just waiting for it to depart again. I waited for three hours on top of the cargo in the gondola. When they started to unload the gondola next to mine, I was like, “Oh, fuck.” I jumped off, and people saw me. They didn't care. So then I just hitchhiked to my home. It took 10 minutes to get a ride all the way. It’s pretty easy to hitchhike here.

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Editor-in-chief — Andrew Fedorov

Rails Editor — Connor McFarland

Altitude Editor — Matt Gu

Open Road Editor — Nico Lethbridge

Deputy Rails Editor — Connor Noble