Blue Train

This was one of the experienced my grandmother was most excited for. Everytime she talked about the train, she would mention how she used to go on trains as a little girl. It brought her back to the feeling she used to have riding on a train as a child.

For me, this was a completely new experience. The only train ride in my life that I remember was the Amtrak I took from DC to New York for New Years Eve a couple years ago.  This train was completely different. Since the train was only at 50% capacity, we both ended up getting our own suites. Otherwise, we would have been squished with all our luggage in one small room. 

The meals were incredible. Of course, there was large amounts of delicious food and drinks. We got to talking with two of the guys who work on the train and they told us about their respective cultures. Both cultures allow for polygamy. In one of them, if you marry and your first born is a girl you can marry another wife. You can keep taking on wives until the first born with that wife is a baby boy. The guy on the train told us his dad has 16 wives! They obviously believe that it is the woman who gives them a baby girl or a boy not the man. Now, this may seem farfetched and that we fell for an implausible story, but this is real! While not apart of this specific culture, the South African president has multiple wives and fiancees (I have heard many different numbers of how many). 

When we woke up the next day, from not so good of a sleep (the train moved too much for me), we were told our train was running three hours behind! In the middle of the night, the train had been informed that a section of the electrical wires had been stolen. People cut long sections of the wires to sell the copper inside. They said this happens four out of ten times! We had to wait to get a diesel engine to tow us past the problem spot.

We got off the train in Pretoria and stayed overnight in Johannesburg with the first half of our trip behind us.