Baboons weave their way under the carriages of a train on a bridge. A hippo wades in the river below, while a lone leopard prowls, sniffing for an antelope to make its dinner.
In the middle of the Kruger National Park, South Africa’s most celebrated wildlife reserve, this luxury train takes passengers — but it never moves.
Converted into a boutique hotel, the train provides a gilded lookout from which guests can gaze over the animal kingdom from the golden sunrise until the Milky Way spills across the nighttime sky.
Photo: AFP
A small platform added to the bridge holds a small round pool, where groups of humans gather at 4pm for high tea, with a pleasant late summer breeze.
A loud grunt silences the chirping of birds.
“It’s a hippo,” a waiter said, as guests lean over the railing, hoping to spot it in the muddy Sabie River below.
Two round ears stick out from the water.
“Adorable,” said Karen Lane, 56, who came from Johannesburg to celebrate 30 years of marriage to her husband, Rich.
“It’s such an experience,” said Chichi Mudau, a 36-year-old sales representative with a smart manicure and a Gucci bucket hat.
“The place, the service is immaculate. Like a dream come true. I love everything about it,” she said.
Moments later, the group will leave in open safari trucks to drive up close to giraffes, elephants and dazzles of zebras in their natural habitat — chewing grass, playing in water and sometimes erupting into fights.
The bridge suspended over this dreamy landscape was abandoned for decades. The hotel won a tender in 2016 to transform it into posh accommodation, with a train that never moves, but always has bird’s-eye views.
In the 1920s, the railway line was the only way into Kruger, but the last locomotive came through in 1979, and the railway fell into disuse.
“We went to a train graveyard to find the carriages,” said Gavin Ferreira, 39, executive manager of operations.
“They were pretty dilapidated. Some had been looted,” he added.
Repurposed into hotel rooms, the carriages offer “a step back into time,” he said.
Walking through the cars, they are numbered to 25, but follow the old hotel superstition whereby number 13 is skipped.
Each carriage has only one room, with a massive bed covered in fresh sheets and overstuffed pillows. Sunlight spills through windows above the tub and sink, for gazing over the river while you brush your teeth. A silk bathrobe waits nearby.
The small balcony beckons, but do not forget to close the door.
“Monkeys here can get pretty aggressive,” and they can come swooping in, the butler said.
When the little gray primates climb onto the bridge, they peer through the panes, looking curiously at guests lying in bed. They are cute, but do not be fooled.
The Kruger Shalati initially expected to cater to Westerners. However, when it opened in December 2020, the COVID-19 pandemic curbed international travel. South Africans booked it up instead.
“The first months, we were fully booked,” reservations manager Ella West said. “We need international guest rates for a place like this to get going.”
Now the train lures more Americans, the voyage made easier by an airstrip just 4km away, she said.
When night falls, the train gently sways with its guests inside.
“It’s a natural movement,” Ferreira said. “It comes from the expansion and retraction of the metal structured bridge.”
The heat of the day makes the metal expand, while the cool nights make it contract.
“Our clients compliment us on the way it reminds them of a train in movement,” he said. “It’s a very subtle movement.”
MONEY MATTERS: Xi was to highlight projects such as a new high-speed railway between Belgrade and Budapest, as Serbia is entirely open to Chinese trade and investment Serbian President Aleksandar Vucic yesterday said that “Taiwan is China” as he made a speech welcoming Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) to Belgrade, state broadcaster Radio Television of Serbia (RTS) said. “We have a clear and simple position regarding Chinese territorial integrity,” he told a crowd outside the government offices while Xi applauded him. “Yes, Taiwan is China.” Xi landed in Belgrade on Tuesday night on the second leg of his European tour, and was greeted by Vucic and most government ministers. Xi had just completed a two-day trip to France, where he held talks with French President Emmanuel Macron as the
With the midday sun blazing, an experimental orange and white F-16 fighter jet launched with a familiar roar that is a hallmark of US airpower, but the aerial combat that followed was unlike any other: This F-16 was controlled by artificial intelligence (AI), not a human pilot, and riding in the front seat was US Secretary of the Air Force Frank Kendall. AI marks one of the biggest advances in military aviation since the introduction of stealth in the early 1990s, and the US Air Force has aggressively leaned in. Even though the technology is not fully developed, the service is planning
INTERNATIONAL PROBE: Australian and US authorities were helping coordinate the investigation of the case, which follows the 2015 murder of Australian surfers in Mexico Three bodies were found in Mexico’s Baja California state, the FBI said on Friday, days after two Australians and an American went missing during a surfing trip in an area hit by cartel violence. Authorities used a pulley system to hoist what appeared to be lifeless bodies covered in mud from a shaft on a cliff high above the Pacific. “We confirm there were three individuals found deceased in Santo Tomas, Baja California,” a statement from the FBI’s office in San Diego, California, said without providing the identities of the victims. Australian brothers Jake and Callum Robinson and their American friend Jack Carter
CUSTOMS DUTIES: France’s cognac industry was closely watching the talks, fearing that an anti-dumping investigation opened by China is retaliation for trade tensions French President Emmanuel Macron yesterday hosted Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) at one of his beloved childhood haunts in the Pyrenees, seeking to press a message to Beijing not to support Russia’s war against Ukraine and to accept fairer trade. The first day of Xi’s state visit to France, his first to Europe since 2019, saw respectful, but sometimes robust exchanges between the two men during a succession of talks on Monday. Macron, joined initially by EU Commission President Ursula von der Leyen, urged Xi not to allow the export of any technology that could be used by Russia in its invasion