A journey on the beautifully restored trains of Rovos Rail combines luxury travel with the chance to experience Southern Africa’s varied landscapes and cultures.
The restaurant cars, observation cars, and sleeping compartments are all restored originals from the 19th and early 20th centuries, featuring intricate dark wood panels, plush upholstered furniture, and velvety carpeted floors.
You can choose from a number of routes offered by Rovos Rail, whether you’re interested in crossing South Africa between Pretoria and Cape Town or arriving at Victoria Falls from a different vantage. While on board, you can get to know your fellow passengers over a drink, enjoy sumptuous silver-service dinners, and relax while soaking up the atmosphere of the restored train.
Start planning your tailor-made trip by contacting one of our South Africa specialists
These activities are designed to give you the most authentic experiences around where you're staying. We work with local guides, who use their knowledge and often a resident's eye to show you the main sights and more out-of-the-way attractions. Our specialists can suggest tours and activities that will introduce you to the local ways of life.
A journey aboard The Blue Train
Travel between Pretoria and Cape Town aboard the Blue Train to experience one of South Africa’s finest rail journeys. You’ll pass through mountains, farmland, and vineyards, pausing to explore old diamond-mining towns en route.
Cape Town city tour
Take a guided tour of the “Mother City”. You’ll visit the Castle of Good Hope, the Parliament Buildings, and the brightly painted Bo-Kaap district for a grounding in the city’s history and culture, as well as riding the rotating cable car up to Table Mountain’s summit.
Kirstenbosch National Botanical Garden
Kirstenbosch National Botanical Garden occupies a large swathe of beautiful land on the lower slopes of Table Mountain. It houses a huge collection of indigenous flora, such as heathery fynbos, flowering proteas and dramatically coloured strelitzias.
Museums of Cape Town
Cape Town boasts a variety of museums that help tell the story of the city’s multi-layered past, as well as that of South Africa as a whole and the wider continent. We share a few that we particularly recommend visiting during your stay.
Peninsula Tour
The Cape Peninsula is an area of dramatic natural beauty and huge ecological significance, which manages to retain a wild feel despite its huge popularity with visitors. As you drive south from Cape Town, you pass through the exclusive suburbs of Camps Bay and Clifton before continuing onto Hout Bay and through Constantia, where the road meanders behind Table Mountain and down onto the coast.
Robben Island tour
Led by a former inmate, you’ll tour Robben Island’s old prison buildings, from the communal cells to the tiny solitary cells of B-Section, where Nelson Mandela spent much of his incarceration. You’ll also explore the wider island and find out more about its uses over the years.
Table Mountain Tour
Guests are taken to the lower terminal for the cable-car up Table Mountain. The cable-car is a very modern affair, and completes a 360º rotation during the ascent, affording you fantastic views over the city.
You can enjoy this activity as part of the suggested tours below, or we can weave it into a trip shaped entirely around you.
