I must admit, once I had received my booking confirmation for a trip on Rovos Rail, I ran around the house like a mad woman.
I’m a self-confessed train addict. A railway buff. In the United Kingdom, railway enthusiasts like me are often called “anoraks”; in Australia “gunzels”. In Japan they are nori-tetsu (people who enjoy travelling by train) and also eki-tetsu (admirers of train station architecture).
In the US, I could be called a “foamer” or “foamite”. A “foamer” because styrofoam is used to create scenery and landscaping in model railroad building and “foamite” supposedly stands for “Far Out and Mentally Incompetent Train Enthusiast”. I’ll take them all.
ROLL ON ROVOS
In case you’ve had your head under a rock since 1989, when this company was started by Rohan Vos, Rovos Rail is a private, as in family-owned, railway company that has earned an international reputation for its world-class travel experiences.
Its train journeys link some of Africa’s greatest destinations such as Victoria Falls; the Kalahari Desert; Etosha National Park in Namibia; Maputo, the capital of Mozambique; Dar es Salaam, Tanzania; and South Luangwa National Park in Zambia as part of various routes throughout Southern Africa.
There are various local trips too. My friend Vicki and I would cover 1, 600km over three nights, embarking at Capital Park Station in Pretoria, disembarking in the Mother City, and getting to view the microcosms of South Africa from a train window. My other half is still nursing his wounds from having missed out on this one as he was on a business trip at the time.
STEP OUT IN STYLE
Rovos Rail is often called the most luxurious train in the world, partly because it has the largest overnight berths in the world. The trains, originally used by Rhodesia Railways, each have two restaurant cars, two lounges and vintage teak-panelled compartments that are truly luxurious. Appropriately for all this splendour, passengers are requested to dress smart-casual in the day and don formal attire in the evenings.
This adds something magical to the train journey, apart from the rhythm of the train rolling on the tracks, of course.
What it also does is make it very difficult to pack. Countless messages between Vicki and myself bounced to and fro.
“Do you think this is smart enough?”
“How many outfits do you have? Are you going to mix and match?”
“Just add some bling, that should zoot it up.”
“I have my mom’s pearls. That should do the trick. What do you think?”
CLIMB ON THE IRON HORSE
Finally, the day arrived. Chauffeured by kind-hearted friends, we arrived more than two hours before departure, yet I realised once there I should have allocated myself more time for the Rovos Rail Museum with its myriad train memorabilia. Train nerd, guilty as charged.
We fully enjoyed the site tour, where we learnt more about how carriages of yesteryear are lovingly restored and how things work at the company, which employs almost 500 people.
Next we were off to the old-fashioned, elegant station building — you feel like a Hollywood star stepping onto a red carpet — where we were served canapés, including macaroons, either emblazoned with the Rovos logo or in the corporate colours of forest green and gold, and glasses of bubbly.
More five-star treatment followed when a porter loaded our luggage on a heavy-duty trolley and took it off to our luxurious compartment. There are three types of accommodation on board, the Pullman, Deluxe and Royal suites.
Our Deluxe suite — we opted for twin beds — had two armchairs, a small writing desk and a bar fridge restocked whenever we called upon our delightfully-named butler, Summer (everyone goes by first name), who was at our beck and call 24 hours a day. Not that anyone, as far as I know, was that brazen. We also had our own en-suite-shower and toilet, whereas the Royal suites each have a Victorian clawfoot bathtub.
Each train carries a maximum of 72 passengers in 36 suites. Given the exclusivity of this trip, one of the top train journeys in the world, it comes at a price that not many Saffers can afford. South Africans make up fewer than 5% of Rovos travellers.
To our delight, we were one of three local travel duos on our bash. “Bashing”, a term mostly used by British railway enthusiasts, describes a trip or holiday primarily involving train travel. This is usually with the intention of collecting mileage on a train. Again, guilty as charged, as I endeavour to get on a train wherever I go in the world.
Our fellow passengers were from France, Australia, Switzerland, China, Norway, America, New Zealand, Ireland, the United Kingdom and Germany.
We’d hardly chugged out of Capital Park before most of us were chatting up a storm in the observation car with its open-air balcony. We click-clacked through the outskirts of the city, then past what seemed like defunct factories, soon taken over by the first of many quintessential South African landscapes.
We hadn’t chuffed for too long when the train stopped for a long time, before it had to go back to our point of embarkation to presumably switch train engines. With superb service and bubbly, wines and gins flowing, we were aware of the delay but not perturbed in the slightest.
Not too long after it was time for lunch. This feast set the scene for all the meals for the next few days with dishes such as twice-baked goat’s cheese soufflé with walnut and apple salsa, seared scallops and asparagus on pea purée with lemon butter cream, duck breast with potato dauphinoise and port wine jus, and Greek-style stuffed chicken with three-bean salad and grilled aubergine.
CARS IN THE KAROO
From the train windows we saw grasses, the koppies of the Karoo, mountain ranges and small dorpies all along the route and, once you get closer to Cape Town, the winelands, as well as delivery trucks whizzing past us on the N1, parallel to the railway line.
We spotted springbok, blesbok, and what looked like a genet, running next to the railway line. Flocks of sheep, herds of cows.
We saw labourers and technicians working on the cables and the train lines, rusty corrugated-iron silos, abandoned working-class railway houses, hundreds of solar panels on unused farmland, and weed-choked cemeteries, some dating from the Anglo-Boer War.
To the surprise of the Saffers, knowing all the shenanigans over the years at Prasa (the Passenger Rail Agency of South Africa), the train stations were mostly clean, though at times dilapidated, and nearly all deserted. We were also the only passengers who could appreciate some of the more unusual names of tiny sidings that reflected local history or displayed clever wordplay, especially in Afrikaans.
A tiny station called Makwassie (a small farming town in North West) inspired fits of giggles. Incidentally, the word is derived from the San word referring to aromatic wild spearmint, but this is not what was conjured by our filthy minds. Believe it or not, Makwassie has a liquor store called Dallas a stone’s throw from where the train passes.
We trundled past quaint towns with houses with stoeps overflowing with house plants and corner cafés, and others where rubbish removal is clearly not on the municipal agenda.
If the schedule allows, there are excursions in Kimberley — visit the Big Hole, tour the museum and explore the retro town that has been created around the hole — and in Matjiesfontein, one of the most attractive hamlets in the country.
Just before our train rumbled into Cape Town we got to marvel at the spectre of Table Mountain, synonymous with the Mother City and all of South Africa.
All of what we saw bears testimony to this wonderful and tortured kaleidoscope that constitutes our beloved and befuddled country. As the adage goes, a (Rovos Rail) train is a small world moving through a larger world. The world we live in.
• For routes, itineraries and prices, see rovos.com. The company occasionally offers reduced rates and specials for residents of South Africa and neighbouring countries. Check for them here.
• Zietsman was a guest of Rovos Rail.
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