The 3-day, $2750/person Rovos Rail train safari from Pretoria to Durban is pulled by 1930s steam trains; features giant, luxurious staterooms with their own bathtubs; offers high tea; and, true to its Edwardian time-warp, passengers are prohibited from working in public areas, lest this break the atmosphere of idle wealth and privilege.
Snark aside, it does sound like a beautiful and romantic journey. But it is certainly the case that the great colonial institutions, such as the members clubs of Pall Mall, often have an injunction against work (or “showing papers”) in their public spaces, and seem to be a relic of the gone-but-returning age when the world was divided into the propertied class with a passive income, and the nouveau riche strivers whose wealth came from actually making or doing things the society valued, rather than merely owning things and charging rent for their use.
And any hearkening back to the romance of “South Africa’s elite” glosses over the brutal, genocidal system that maintained those elites and whose scars the country still bears.
Before long a gong sounds to call guests to the dining cars for a seven-course meal, each with a wine pairing.
The food leans heavily toward local fare, both game and produce, all of it meticulously prepared.
The Cape Town journey is one of the shortest, but includes two stops.
The first is at Kimberley, the diamond mining town known for the “Big Hole,” the largest excavation in the world, a mile wide and going down seemingly forever.
The other stop is in Matjiesfontein, in the middle of the Karoo.
The entire town is a national heritage site, preserving the Victorian village that was founded as a railway rest stop but became a health spa once frequented by South Africa’s elite.
Steam safari: African animal-spotting on world’s ‘most luxurious train’ [Griffin Shea/CNN]
(via Neatorama)