Pilanesberg to Pretoria

A very early start today as we said farewell to the beautiful Ivory Tree Game Lodge and were transported to Pretoria for the next part of our adventure - 3 nights on the Rovos train, the pride of South Africa and a little bit of old world luxury.
Unfortunately the rail systems in South Africa don't run as efficiently as they should. Trains frequently break down and as there is only one single track, the train behind is often held up.
This is exactly what happened to us. We crawled out of the dedicated Rovos station, went a few kms to Pretoria, backed up a couple of times, then stopped. Our locomotive had broken down so now we had to wait for a new loco to come up from Capetown. Eventually some time through the night we started moving again only to go about 100km before stopping again, this time due to a train breaking down ahead of us. As I'm writing this, after having been stationary for 5 hours we have just been informed that the broken train is gone and we are free to move as soon as we get clearance. Yeay 🎉
Our cabin is tiny but well equipped. In hindsight we should have opted for the next level up which would have given us more room to spread out.Read more