The Blue Train (Part 1)

14 hours after our second boarding in Sydney we touched down at O.R. Tambo Airport in Johannesburg – the airport was very quiet and we breezed through immigration and customs. A pre-arranged taxi took us to The Residence in Houghton, an upmarket suburb in J’burg. The hotel and restaurant was beautiful – a shame we didn’t get the 2 nights we paid for (and sorry – no refunds…).

I have been excited about travelling on the Blue Train since I first heard about it – we had booked it in 2020 and had built our itinerary around when we could get on, but the pandemic upset those plans. For those unfamiliar the Blue Train is a luxury overnight train that travels between Pretoria (near Johannesburg) to Cape Town -1,600 km taking 3 days for the one way journey. After a quick session at the hotel gym (yes that isn’t a misprint!) we had an unnecessarily large breakfast (it was included so would have been rude not to…) we repacked our awkwardly designed bags and Ubered to the check-in point for the Blue Train – Irene Country Lodge. We hung there for a couple of hours while they checked our bags and entertained us with a saxophonist playing the Girl from Ipanema then George Michael and Ed Sheeran… very African…

We were shuttled to Irene Station at around midday where we boarded the train and met our Butler Thabo for the trip who showed us the featured of the room, which included a bathtub and a fold down double bed. The windows are double glazed and bullet proof – there have been cases of locals throwing rocks at the train. We pulled out of the station at around 1.30pm but alas, despite the luxury, South African infrastructure is unreliable and we made multiple stops due to the theft of the copper rail overhead lines and had travelled less than 100 km by the time we retired for the night.. Despite the frustration, we have met some great folk on the train – mostly from different parts of South Africa and have discovered quite a bit about the country that they don’t publish on Trip Advisor.