The Blue Train

The Blue train is a famous 27 hour excursion linking Pretoria with Cape Town, a distance of about 1,000 miles. This was to have been a key part of my original trip as planned with my brother and sister.  The train highlight was to be the evening dinner, men in coat and tie, ladies in fine evening wear.  I even had to purchase the coat and tie as I no longer had either!  We departed 20 minutes early on Monday morning, headed for a tourist excursion stop in Kimberly to see the famous huge mining hole in the ground. We arrived an hour late, but so what, it is a train.  They are always late.  Off we went to see the hole. When we got back, it was evening and it seemed a bit weird that the train was dark.  Oh well, they must be doing something.  It was about 7:30 and dinner was to be at 8:00.  The train remained hot and dark.  Many of us gathered in the sweltering bar car and the poor staff served us in the dark, using flashlights to find and prepare the drinks.  Finally we were informed that the electrical system had totally died.  They were working on it, but who knows how long? Around 10:00 PM, myself and my newly found friends decided to dress up anyway.  We had drinks delivered to the cooler train platform and we all hung out there in fine evening wear.  No dinner, but I think most of my crowd was Ok with that. the staff served left over sandwiches from high tea and the drinks kept flowing.  At 1:30 AM we were fixed and on our way. Only to stop after15 minutes for a brake system repair. 45 minutes later, we started out again.  And so it went.  We even stopped for nearly 2 hours near Cape Town due to excessive winds.  My British friends were not surprised as I guess British trains are impacted by autumn leaves on the tracks, so maybe too much wind does affect trains?

So, the scheduled noon arrival into Cape Town became 9:30 PM. I was to go to the airport, pick up a rental car and drive one hour to a remote winery/B&B with a 15 step set of written directions to guide me.   (With clear warnings to NOT use your navigation as it will not work for them.) I told the train staff no way could I do that at night, and they did get me a driver to go there and bring me back to the airport the following morning. I got to this place somehow Ok at midnight.

So, not quite what was expected, but in a way, maybe more fun. I met great people and saw a super staff work so hard to try to deal with all of us.  And, without prompting, got a 25% refund on the trip costs from the train so it really was handled well.

My cabin/stateroom for the journey.

Yes, that is a full sized bath tub.

A nice feature for a guy who only watches the map on planes. A front view camera.  Can’t tell you how exciting it was to watch the train sit time and time again. Gayle had a great phrase that works here. “Like watching paint dry.”  When bored, I could switch to the GPS view which also would mostly show that we were stopped.

We did slow down to see a lake with many thousands of pink flamingos in it.  Pretty cool.

Alighting from the train at Kimberly for our 1 hour excursion. Little did I know at that time how familiar this platform would become over the next 5 hours.

The big hole.  Mining stopped here in 1914, but the amazing/sad part is that it was totally dug by hand!  And you know it was not Europeans doing the digging……  Kimberly is still the headquarters of DeBeers.

All dressed up and nowhere to go! This shows a few of the staff, a female couple from Amsterdam, a Japanese couple on their 20th wedding anniversary, and a couple from Kent, UK.  The guy in the front is actually the driver of the train.

I love the Karoo of South Africa.  Classic view.  Very much like Eastern Oregon.

Now we are sitting about 2 hours out of Cape Town due to wind or something.  We are all still smiling, but it has been a long trip.  Eventually we pulled/limped into Cape Town 9 hours late.  I did learn how to paly a card game which I have since forgotten. Oh well.  Everyone was quite fun to be around.