About this journey

Calcoto station sits within the high-altitude rail network of Bolivia's Andina Railway, known as EFASA, a metre-gauge system operating across the Altiplano. The line connects at the Chilean border with the Arica–La Paz railway, a route whose own history is inseparable from regional geopolitics: it was built under the Treaty of Peace and Friendship of 1904 between Chile and Bolivia and inaugurated on 13 May 1913. EFASA itself is administered by Bolivian Railway Investors, a subsidiary of Antofagasta PLC, binding these Bolivian operations to a major Chilean mining conglomerate.

The journey ends at Viacha station, where EFASA maintains well-equipped workshop facilities not far from La Paz. Those workshops have played a quiet but significant role in keeping high-altitude, metre-gauge operations functional through periods when connecting infrastructure lay dormant — the Bolivian section of the Arica–La Paz corridor remained serviceable as a local rail-bus route even while the Chilean side underwent rehabilitation between 2010 and 2012. That rehabilitation laid 67 km of rail on 73,000 timber sleepers, allowing freight trains to operate at up to 40 km/h at an estimated cost of US$45 million, with freight traffic resuming in May 2021. The cab ride from Calcoto to Viacha therefore traces a corridor shaped as much by treaty and revival as by the Andean terrain itself.