Hot Spot: Steaming in Africa

19 October 2014 - 02:03 By Paul Ash
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Paul Ash heads to Zambia for a dinner run aboard the Royal Livingstone Express

It takes a steady hand to pour the perfect Bloody Mary in a 60-year-old railway car rocking along on old rails without spilling it but steward Sunday Phiri has clearly done this before.

I can barely pour a drink on level ground in my own house without making a mess so I am impressed to see Phiri pour half a dozen sundowners with a flick of a wrist and then, tray held high, make his way down the length of the coach, untroubled by the erratic motion of the bogies as they dip and sway over track that has clearly seen better days.

The Americans are also impressed. "Ooh," they gasp, torn between the sight of the balletic Phiri and the greenery of wild Africa slipping past the windows.

Yes, the setting helps too.

We - a group of tourists at the end of their first day in Africa, and I - are riding west on the Royal Livingstone Express, five exquisitely restored passenger coaches from another time, pulled by a steam locomotive that once hauled train loads of teak logs on this very track, back when it was called the Zambesi Sawmills Railway.

The express is a steam-age luxury dinner train run by Livingstone safari operator Bushtracks, in partnership with the Royal Livingstone Hotel. Twice a week, it steams out of the Bushtracks siding and clanks along slowly down the line to Victoria Falls bridge, or west on the old logging tracks towards Mulobezi.

Tonight, we are going west, trundling through the Mosi Oa Tunya National Park, keeping company with the Zambezi River which we cannot see but know lies wide and greasy just on the other side of the trees.

Everyone wants to see an elephant, a lion, an antelope or a monkey . anything, in fact. But the animals are scarce this evening as we rock and roll into the sunset. It doesn't matter - the setting is enough to fire even the dullest of imaginations.

Sundowners are served in the observation car at the rear of the train and it is here, on the open platform of the car, that the magic begins to work as a combination of bushveld, and old train and smells wafting down from the galley, and the passengers seem transported as they look out for wild animals.

It is a short run either way - at sunset, the train eases to a halt in a siding. The passengers climb down and watch the crew run the engine around the train. They climb into the cab and stare at the gleaming brass and feel the heat from the firebox. Everyone is impressed by the heat and the smell and the sheer wonderfulness of it. Never mind not seeing elephants - here is a living, fire-breathing animal of epic proportions right in front of them.

"It's amazing," says Zach, the young American from Rochester, NY. "It's phenomenal to be riding a train from this time period."

Dinner - prepared by Royal Livingstone chef Edwin Nyambe - is served in a dining car with wood pillars. Train manager Shadrack Sikapende, the hotel's food and beverage manager, takes me to watch Edwin bustle around the cramped galley. He is busy with the dressing for the pear and blue cheese salad and has little time for pesky questions. "Talk to me after the lamb," he says and waves us away.

"It's a bygone era," says Shadrack as we walk down the glowing corridor to the dining car. "It takes people back to the 1940s when the world was real."

Dinner is served as the train rests in the siding. As the starter of blue cheese and pear salad is served, the engine crew fuss over their locomotive, trying to fix a problem with the coupler. While we eat - a vol-au-vent of Norwegian salmon and a slow-cooked shoulder of lamb followed by apple pie and ice cream - they crouch in the glow of the headlamp and wrestle with the steel knuckle, which will not move and does not care that a train load of Americans is waiting to be hauled back out of the elephant-flush jungle to the warmth of their luxury riverside hotel.

Ben Magura, the Bushtracks train manager and an old hand from the railways, lets them get on with it, knowing that whatever problem a steam locomotive has, a bit of ingenuity will fix it.

And so it is. As coffee is served, the locomotive eases up to the observation car and couples on with a gentle thunk. A short blast on the whistle and whoosh of steam and we are on the way, heading back down the line to Livingstone.

Now the engine is coupled nose-first to the observation car and we can stand close and feel and smell it work. Even though the driver is in no hurry and the locomotive is merely ambling along, the sound is impressive - a heavy, rhythmic pant in four-four time, clanking connecting rods, waste steam hissing from the valves and somewhere below us, the clickety-clack of the wheels running over the joints in the track.

One of the Americans totters out of the lounge car and listens in wonder as the engine begins to pant up another hill.

"I hope my dreams tonight include this sound," he says.

The Americans are on a safari with Tauck, a boutique US travel operator. After dinner, a group gathers at the rear of the observation car, shouting over the roar of the locomotive.

Maybe it's the fine red wine we enjoyed at dinner; more likely it is the setting as the bush - with its unseen wild animals and thorn trees silhouetted against a rising moon - grapples with the Africa of their imaginations.

"Do you remember Tarzan?" asks one. I nod. "What was his elephant's name. Simba?"

"Nah, Simba was the lion," his wife shouts.

I comment on his New York twang.

"I don't have an accent," he grumps.

His wife chimes in pitch-perfect Brooklynese. "That's what they yawl say - 'I don't heeyav an accent, I don't' ."

"Could we use drums to find out?" one man asks.

"Find out what?"

"The elephant's ."

"What was the monkey's name?" shouts another, roaring with laughter.

Now the engine is running for home, smoke rising above the forest and the train flicks along through the Zambian night, a string of golden lights and red sparks.

We stand in the observation car and breathe the scents of the bush - earth and dust - scented with hot oil and coal smoke.

Livingstone appears in a scatter of lights and the driver gives a long, echoing blast on the whistle, warning any drivers and pedestrians about that heavy, hot steel is afoot this night.

As we trundle through the suburbs, children shout hellos from the dark and a man leans on his parked bakkie and watches us go by.

Some things in travel are gifts. Like a steam train, a dining car with gleaming woodwork and gold light, and great company and good food, wine sloshing gently in goblets, and a gentle ride on old rails through the African night.

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