Sunday, November 19, 2006
Speed, said Julius gravely, was the one thing “the old lady” doesn’t offer. Champagne, oysters, the finest wines and “food to make you unbuckle your belt”, she could provide all that and more. But speed – no. “She doesn’t go more than 35 miles an hour – and most times way below that”, explained Julius.
For two days he was my personal butler, and the “old lady” he spoke of with an affection I came to share, is the most luxurious train in all-Africa, the Blue Train.
For 24 hours a day he was there to meet my every whim. I have had butlers before. At the Mandarin Hotel in Hong Kong mine accompanied me to the rooftop hotel pool. Every time I took a dip, he stepped forward with a crisply laundered towel.
My butler at the Manele Bay Hotel in Hawaii during the weeks I spent there on location for my film, Time Ran Out, somehow had obtained a copy of my screenplay. Every day he assumed the role of a character.
At the Palazzo Vendramin in Venice, my butler hummed arias as he came and left the suite.
Julius was in this mould: the personification of impeccable service. There when I wanted him, invisible when not. He assured me when we first met that he was there to perform any task, adding: “Anything legal, sir.”
On that first night I decided to test this. In the early hours I summoned him – one press of his butler’s bell. Could he bring me freshly-squeezed orange juice and a small plate of pancakes? He was back in no time, order fulfilled.
This of course is standard for the Blue Train. During the two days I spent on it, I felt cocooned and cosseted as we clackety-clacked from Cape Town to Port Elizabeth.
Every night Julius took away my clothes and returned them while I was asleep, pressed to perfection. He ran my shower, polished my shoes, put on my favourite CDs and constantly provided a fund of information of where we were at any given point.
He advised on the best choices on the menu. The food is as good as it gets on any de luxe train. Julius, I concluded, was a throwback to those days when butlers, like an Arabian genie, gently mocked their masters while remaining totally loyal. A difficult act to perform. A bit like the train on which he has spent ten years of his working life, padding up and down its richly carpeted corridors to a suite.
British Rail Julius is certainly not. Years on the Blue Train has made him unflappable yet without any touch of obsequiousness.
The Blue Train has undergone an 11 million euro refurbishment that saw her stripped to her bogeys and rebuilt. She is being heavily promoted as one way to see South Africa during the next World Cup. The price tag depends on which route you take but there won’t be much change out of 1,000 euro a day.
Since 1928 this luxury train service has run between Johannesburg and Cape Town and on up to Victoria Falls in Zimbabwe. It also follows the Garden Route along the Eastern Cape to Port Elizabeth.
I had chosen that leg to see if it was all people claimed. Having travelled over the years on Canadian Pacific’s trans-Canada deluxe train and the Orient Express, and the Beijing-Hong Kong flier, I felt I knew a thing or two about luxury on the rail track. But from the moment I was welcomed by Julius in its exclusive Departure Lounge at Cape Town station, it became clear the Blue Train surpasses them all.
Julius offered a glass of chilled vintage champagne and a plate of plump Plattenberg Bay oysters. There was also caviar and a range of finger bite-sized delicacies plus a range of freshly squeezed fruit juices. While I nibbled and sipped, Julius stowed my bags in my cabin and returned to say he was ready to escort me there.
The Blue Train offers a choice of double or twin beds, each with its own bathroom and electric hairdryer. Like the rest of the train, each cabin has its own thermostat-controlled air conditioning.
Strolling along the platform to my cabin, the Blue Train was at its most magnificent. Quarter-of-a-mile long, its blueness matched that of the sky.
My cabin was what you would expect for the journey. Utterly compact and operated by remote control, there was a television that showed the view from the front of the train. On the bedside table was a bowl of fresh fruit and yet another glass of chilled champagne.
All beverages – alcohol or soft – plus meals are included. So too are regular changes of towels and bedding. There is also a laundry and valet service. For those who can’t stay away from the office there is a fax service. The services of a dentist or doctor are also available along the route. There is a postal service. Each cabin has its own personal phone, able to make or receive calls from almost anywhere in the world.
Glass in hand, I followed Julius to the Club Car. Filled with plump sofas that lighten the mahogany panelling, the atmosphere is that of a gentleman’s club. There is a Smoking Area.
Already passengers who had never met an hour before, were swapping intimate stories as the Blue Train glided eastwards along the Garden Route.
An America couple regaled us with a hilarious story of how they had travelled from San Francisco to climb Table Mountain only to find its “table cloth” cloud so low that they had seen nothing from the summit.
Nelson, the barman, clucked sympathetically and said that as compensation he would like to offer the couple his “mountain top fire cocktail”. By the look of what he put into it, the mixture was potent enough to blow away any cloud.
Meantime the mood had changed. A dashing Englishman in bush jacket and cravat announced he would never return to Cape Town’s waterfront district again because he had been expertly pick-pocketed. This led to a German couple expounding on the aftermath of apartheid and the huge gap of cultural difference that still exist. It was a reminder that outside the sense of security that permeated the Club Car there was the real South Africa.
Sharp at 7.30pm, with the dusk gathering beyond the panoramic windows, Moses, the maitre d’ in the dining room, announced he awaited our pleasure.
Undoubtedly the dining room is the showpiece of the Blue Train. To reach it you pass the kitchen, a marvel of modern planning; all stainless steel and ducts to conduct outside the train the cooking aromas of a banquet about to be served. A large window offered a view of the half-dozen chefs and their assistants frying, baking and mixing, moving in a ballet of their own, singing as they worked.
The outstanding food and wine, coupled to the sheer romanticism of it all, cemented the feeling of bonhomie that had taken root. Beyond the windows the blackness of the African night made dinner a Hollywood-like experience.
Listening to the ebb and flow of the conversations, it struck me that there were enough plots here for a dozen movies. The austere-looking Canadian turned out to be a miner in one of the Islamic republics of the former Soviet Union. The woman who looked like the classic merry widow turned out to be a nun whose Order had saved to give her this trip. The Frenchman who pronounced on every wine with great authority admitted he was in South Africa to check out its vintages and had just bought 90,000 cases from a vineyard in Constantia.
I was there because somebody else was paying – the producers who plan to turn my screenplay into a movie. Mambo is about an elephant and a girl's adventures as she saves it from being legally culled by her father, a game warden. It's another twist on the buddy-buddy film. Some of the scenes are scheduled to take place on the Blue Train. The rest will be shot at the Shamwari Game Reserve near Port Elizabeth, our final destination. The producers had asked me to check out the train and to see if one of the elephants at Shamwari could take the role of Mambo.
Dinner over, it was time for bed. Julius had turned back the covers and laid a sealed packet of earplugs on the pillow to keep out the rumble of wheels on tracks that have seen better days.
Having established that he would bring me morning tea at dawn, I fell into a dreamless slumber. Next morning Julius was there, raising the window blinds and serving tea from a silver pot.
I lay in bed watching the sun rise over the veldt, my sense of unreality returning. Beyond my little haven there were huts with no electricity, no sanitation, with little visible means of support, yet they cheered and waved as we passed. It was surreal.
Second day was much like the first, filled with a sense of not wanting the fantasy to end. From time to time the train stopped for no explained reason. Other times it was for the passengers to be drive in air-conditioned comfort by coach to visit an ostrich farm or a tribal village.
In between we ate and drank with the same abandon. I had a feeling that some of the guests were determined to get their money’s worth.
We passed through the barren Karoo and swung gently down the coast. The great vistas of Africa continued to unfold before us. And yet I had a sense of sadness, not about the trip soon ending but that for its entire length we had seen, but never been in touch with, the actual smell and life of the bush. We had watched the moon rise but we had never been able to sit out and listen to the roar of a lion or any other animal. We had seen them but only from a protected distance.
For all its undeniable magic, the Blue Train somehow managed to keep the real Africa at a distance from me.