We flew back to Jo'burg on Tuesday and then had a shuttle bus take us to Pretoria to spend the night at a beautiful hotel called the Court Classique. We had dinner in their luxurious dinner room, but the service was unbelievably slow. The food was good if you could manage to wait for it, however. The next morning the hotel's shuttle took us to the Rovos Rail station where we embarked on the next stage of our journey.
This was not a fast train journey. It was slow and stately and luxurious. The total time from start to finish was about two and a half days. At the Rovos Rail station we met the other passengers on the train and had an introduction to the trip by the ownder of the train, Mr. Rohan Vos (hence the name Rovos). After the introduction and overview of the trip we all boarded the train, found our rooms and prepared for the beginning of the trip. We left Pretoria in the early afternoon, heading southwest, pretty much following the Vaal river. The train route is marked in green on the map below. We had two stops during the journey. The first was in Kimberley where we were taken by bus to the famous Kimberley diamond mine. The second stop was on the morning of the last day of the trip. The train stopped about 3 miles outside of the historic, old Afrikaner town of Matjiesfontein. Those of us who felt like a walk (or run for that matter) disembarked from the train and walked into the town where we found the train waiting for us.
We arrived in Cape Town in the early evening and were then taken to our hotel, which was located near the parliament building in downtown Cape Town.
