About this journey

Yacuíba station sits at the southern tip of Bolivia's eastern rail network, where the Ferrocarril Santa Cruz de la Sierra–Yacuiba begins its 517-kilometre reach northward into the Chaco lowlands. The line's origins lie in a joint Argentine-Bolivian railway commission established in 1938; surveys were completed by 1943, and Argentina financed the construction, with Bolivia repaying the loans by delivering petroleum.

The route runs through the Gran Chaco basin, a vast lowland region that remained at the centre of geopolitical rivalry between Argentina and Brazil in the 1930s, both nations seeking influence over oil-rich eastern Bolivia. The terrain stays low throughout: the eastern Bolivian network has no direct connection to the country's western lines, and the only through route between them runs via Argentina, adding approximately 600 kilometres to any cross-network journey.

Villamontes station lies at 439 metres above sea level, on the edge of the Serranía del Aguaragüe and on the left bank of the Río Pilcomayo. The town served as the principal Bolivian defensive stronghold during the final phase of the Chaco War in 1935. The journey from Yacuíba thus moves between two places shaped by the same mid-twentieth-century history — a petroleum economy and a hard-fought border conflict — connected by a metre-gauge line that still runs GE-built U10B locomotives across the Chaco floor.