Pretoria to Cape Town
Pretoria → Cape Town
The Blue Train's Pretoria to Cape Town journey is one of the world's great rail odysseys — a 1,600-kilometre passage across the heart of southern Africa, completed over two nights and three days aboard what has long been called a moving five-star hotel. Departing from the administrative capital of South Africa at noon, the train glides southward through the open grasslands of the Highveld before the landscape shifts dramatically into the vast, semi-arid emptiness of the Great Karoo, then climbs through the Hex River Mountains before descending into the lush Cape Winelands.
En route, guests step off the train in Kimberley for a guided excursion to the famous Big Hole and the Open Mine Museum — a visceral encounter with the diamond rush that shaped modern South Africa. Back on board, butler service, gourmet dining, fine South African wines, and a lounge car perfect for watching the scenery slide by fill the hours between stops. Each suite is a private sanctuary of marble, gold fixtures, and panoramic windows with GPS position displays.
The journey concludes at Cape Town at approximately 18:00 on day three, delivering guests to one of the world's most celebrated cities. For those who prize comfort, scenery, and history in equal measure, this is the definitive southern African rail experience — unhurried, elegant, and unforgettable.
- ✦Guided excursion to Kimberley's legendary Big Hole and Diamond Mine Museum
- ✦Panoramic views across the vast Great Karoo semi-desert landscape
- ✦Dramatic morning descent through the Hex River Mountains into the Cape Winelands
- ✦All-inclusive gourmet dining with South African wines and full butler service
- ✦Luxury marble suites with deep soaking baths and GPS position displays
- ✦Complimentary engraved sherry glass souvenir from Kimberley
- ✦Arrival at Cape Town with Table Mountain on the horizon
Day-by-Day Itinerary
Day 1 — Pretoria: Departure
Check-in at the exclusive Blue Train lounge at Pretoria Station begins at 10:00, with boarding from 11:15. The train departs precisely at 12:00, gliding away from the Union Buildings' city through the northern suburbs and out onto the broad, sunlit plateau of the Highveld. Afternoon is spent settling into your suite — marble bathroom, deep soaking bath or shower, twin or double beds dressed in fine linens — and exploring the train's lounge and observation cars. As the flat grasslands of Gauteng give way to undulating terrain dotted with acacia and aloe, the onboard kitchen begins the evening's first formal sitting. Dinner is a black-tie affair: guests don jackets and ties (men) or elegant wear (ladies) and take their places in the dining car, where crisp silver and crystal service accompanies an ever-changing menu of locally sourced produce — often including Karoo lamb and award-winning South African wines. After dinner the train plunges south through the night, the Highveld fading behind and the great emptiness of the Karoo approaching.
Day 2 — Kimberley: Diamond Rush Excursion
The Blue Train arrives at Kimberley Station at 10:00. Guests disembark for a guided bus excursion to the Kimberley Mine Museum and the Big Hole — one of the most remarkable man-made features on earth. Excavated entirely by hand between 1871 and 1914, the Big Hole measures 463 metres wide and drops 240 metres into the earth; some 50,000 miners once dug here with picks and shovels, extracting more than 3,000 kilograms of diamonds (14.5 million carats) over four decades. The open-air museum reconstructs the Victorian boomtown of Old Kimberley, with period buildings, mining machinery, and displays telling the story of De Beers and the men who built a city in the dust. An enclosed ramp leads guests to the rim of the hole itself — the view down into the turquoise water far below is staggering. Upon re-boarding, each guest receives a commemorative engraved sherry glass, a tradition that has become part of the Blue Train legend. The train departs Kimberley at 12:30 and the afternoon unfolds across the spectacular Karoo — Africa's great semi-arid interior, covering roughly a third of South Africa's land area. High tea is served in the lounge car as the sky turns enormous and the land the colour of dry grass stretches to every horizon. Pre-dinner drinks and formal dinner follow as the train continues south through the night, crossing the Hex River Pass.
Day 3 — Cape Town: Arrival
Guests wake to one of the journey's most dramatic passages: the train descending through the Hex River Mountains, past steep canyon walls and the first orchards and vineyards of the Cape Winelands. The valley opens gradually onto the Boland, with the distinctive flat-topped peaks of the Western Cape framing the approach to Africa's southern tip. Breakfast is served as the train threads the final kilometres through the Cape Flats, the silhouette of Table Mountain growing steadily larger through the observation windows. The Blue Train arrives at Cape Town Station at approximately 18:00, completing a 50- to 54-hour journey through the full breadth of southern Africa. Cape Town itself awaits: the V&A Waterfront, Table Mountain National Park, the Cape of Good Hope, the winelands of Stellenbosch and Franschhoek — all within easy reach for those extending their stay.
Destinations & Highlights
Pretoria, Gauteng
South Africa's administrative capital sits on the Highveld plateau at 1,339 metres above sea level, surrounded by jacaranda trees that turn the city purple-blue each October and November. Founded in 1855, Pretoria is home to the Union Buildings — Sir Herbert Baker's sweeping sandstone seat of government — the Voortrekker Monument, and Church Square, the historic heart of the old republic. Departure from Pretoria places guests immediately into the rhythms of the Highveld, a rolling grassland plateau that is among Africa's most agriculturally productive regions and still one of its most visually dramatic in early morning light.
Kimberley, Northern Cape
No place captures the convulsive energy of 19th-century southern Africa quite like Kimberley. In 1866 a child playing near Hopetown picked up what turned out to be an 83-carat diamond — the Star of South Africa — and within five years the largest diamond rush in history had transformed a barren hill called Colesberg Kopje into a chaotic mining camp of 50,000 people. The resulting excavation, the Big Hole, is 463 metres wide and was dug 240 metres deep by hand — making it the world's largest hand-dug excavation. The Kimberley Mine Museum preserves the Victorian streets, pubs, and counting houses of Old Kimberley, while the hole itself — now filled with turquoise groundwater — remains a humbling reminder of human ambition. Kimberley also gave the world Cecil John Rhodes and the origins of De Beers Consolidated Mines, whose influence on southern African history is incalculable.
The Great Karoo
Covering roughly 400,000 square kilometres of South Africa's interior, the Karoo is one of the continent's most dramatic landscapes — an ancient, semi-arid basin ringed by mountain ranges, carpeted in low scrub, succulents, and bleached grass, and populated by springbok, meerkats, and millions of stars on moonless nights. The Blue Train crosses the Karoo through the afternoon and night of day two; by day the landscape is hypnotic in its scale and silence, the horizon impossibly distant, the sky occupying more of the frame than the earth. The Karoo's geology records some of Africa's most significant fossil deposits, including numerous specimens of the therapsids — the mammal-like reptiles that eventually gave rise to mammals.
Hex River Mountains and Cape Winelands
The final act of the Blue Train's southward journey is its descent through the Hex River Mountains — a series of dramatic valleys and passes that mark the transition between the dry interior and the Mediterranean climate of the Western Cape. The Hex River Valley is South Africa's largest table-grape-growing region, its steep mountain walls protecting an agricultural landscape of orchards and vineyards that stretches down toward the Boland. Beyond lies the heartland of the Cape Winelands — Stellenbosch, Paarl, Franschhoek — and ultimately Cape Town, anchored by Table Mountain, one of the world's great natural landmarks and the centrepiece of a UNESCO World Heritage Site.
Cape Town, Western Cape
Few cities arrive so dramatically as Cape Town, framed by Table Mountain, Devil's Peak, and Lion's Head. Founded by the Dutch East India Company in 1652 as a refreshment station on the spice route, Cape Town is today a cosmopolitan metropolis of beaches, galleries, restaurants, and world-class wine estates. The V&A Waterfront, Robben Island (where Nelson Mandela was imprisoned for 18 years), Boulders Beach penguin colony, the Cape of Good Hope Nature Reserve, and the scenic Chapman's Peak drive are among the city's headline attractions. Many Blue Train guests choose to extend their stay — the city and its surrounding winelands reward several days of exploration.