South Africa: Stay Aboard a Train at Mossel Bay’s Beach

🚂 South Africa: Stay Aboard a Train at Mossel Bay’s Beach

🌥️ Over the Mountains and Down to the Coast

After a couple of days in Oudtshoorn — that strange, wonderful little town in the Klein Karoo where everyone seems to be either farming ostriches or showing tourists around them — it was time to head back to the coast. We’d had a brilliant time there, but the sea was calling. So after a quick breakfast we loaded up the car and pointed it south, towards the Outeniqua Mountains that separate the arid Karoo plateau from the lush coastal strip of the Garden Route. The weather as we left Oudtshoorn was genuinely lovely — sunny, warm, with that clear, dry Karoo air that feels like a tonic after the humidity of the coast. But we could already see the trouble ahead: a thick bank of cloud sitting on top of the mountains like a grey duvet, which was, unfortunately, precisely where we were heading.

Robinson Pass, which carries the R328 road over the Outeniqua range at an altitude of around 860 metres, has been an important route between the Karoo interior and the coast since the mid-nineteenth century, when ox wagons made this crossing to bring produce down to the harbour at Mossel Bay. The pass itself was formally opened in 1869 and named after Thomas Bain, the famous South African road builder — except it wasn’t, because it was actually named after a local farmer. It’s a winding, dramatic route through fynbos-covered slopes, and judging from what we could see through the occasional break in the cloud, it would have been an absolutely gorgeous drive on a clear day. Sadly, it wasn’t a clear day. As we climbed, the clouds closed in around us completely, reducing visibility to a few metres in places and turning the whole thing into a slightly tense exercise in following the white line. We kept telling ourselves it probably looked magnificent. We’ll have to take their word for it.

As we descended from the mountains onto the coastal plains south of the range, we’d hoped the weather might improve. It did not. The grey, overcast sky stuck with us like a particularly persistent acquaintance you’ve been trying to shake at a party, all the way down to the coast.

☕ Jack’s Bagels and a Gloomy Arrival

The drive from Oudtshoorn to Mossel Bay is only around 80 kilometres, which on South African roads with South African scenery — even invisible South African scenery — doesn’t take very long at all. We arrived in Mossel Bay sometime around mid-morning, which was unfortunately a little too early to check into where we were staying. We had a bit of time to kill, so we drove around the town for a while to get our bearings, which in Mossel Bay is not an especially taxing exercise. It’s a compact, pleasantly manageable place built on a headland overlooking a large, sweeping bay, with a busy harbour, a decent town centre, and a waterfront that’s been prettied up for tourists without losing all of its working-port character.

Being a tourist town of some standing — Mossel Bay has been attracting visitors since at least 1488, when the Portuguese explorer Bartolomeu Dias became the first European to land here, though admittedly the accommodation options were considerably more limited then — there were plenty of coffee shops to choose from. We came across Jack’s Bagels, which we’d sampled previously in Stellenbosch and rather enjoyed, not having realised it was a chain of shops rather than a lone outpost. By the time we found a table it was nearly lunchtime, so we went slightly beyond coffee and ordered a vegetarian wrap and one of their gorgonzola, figs, cream cheese and walnut bagels drizzled with honey, which is — and we say this with complete confidence — genuinely delicious. The kind of thing you find yourself thinking about later when you’re back home eating a sad desk sandwich.

🚃 Checking Into the Santos Express

It was close enough to check-in time to justify making a move, so we paid up and drove over to our accommodation. I hadn’t told Karen where we were staying — always a slightly risky strategy — and I was watching her face carefully as we pulled up next to what appeared, from the outside, to be a row of old railway carriages parked on the beach. To her enormous credit, she didn’t immediately get back in the car.

The Santos Express is, as advertised, exactly what it looks like: a genuine train. A series of decommissioned railway carriages that have been converted into a hostel and hotel, sitting permanently on the sands of Santos Beach in Mossel Bay, overlooking the Indian Ocean, in one of the more pleasingly improbable locations in South African hospitality. The train takes its name from Santos Beach itself, and the carriages it uses are similar in style to the Transkaroo first-class coaches that operated on South African Railways routes during the 1970s — substantial, well-built vehicles that were built to last and have, in this case, lasted rather longer than anyone originally intended.

The Santos Express first opened its doors on 1 December 1994, which feels like a very specific piece of information but is the sort of detail that suggests someone was keeping close track of proceedings. Nine decommissioned coaches were procured from South African Railways and fitted out with the necessary plumbing and electricity. In those early days it was a fairly basic operation: one coach served as a communal kitchen, the rooms were dormitory-style affairs, and a bed cost the princely sum of R25 per person per night, though you had to bring your own bedding, which rather takes the shine off things. The place proved enormously popular, particularly with international visitors who apparently found the idea of sleeping in a train on a beach considerably more appealing than the management had perhaps expected. A restaurant and bar were added, the accommodation was upgraded, and the whole enterprise gradually evolved into something rather more polished.

It hasn’t been entirely plain sailing. In August 2007 a fire destroyed the restaurant and offices, taking with it all of the original train memorabilia and authentic fittings — a significant loss for what had been building up a genuinely interesting collection of railway artefacts. The restaurant was rebuilt, but the Santos Express has been keen to restore that authentic character, and two vintage wooden coaches — known as the Royal Suites — were subsequently acquired to add a touch of genuine grandeur. These were built in 1919 and 1921 respectively, which makes them over a hundred years old, and they were originally transported by boat from England to South Africa, where they served a luxury rail company before being decommissioned. They made their last journey by rail to join the Santos fleet in December 2013, which is rather a lovely final chapter for a couple of Edwardian railway carriages.

Some of the carriages operate as hostel-style shared accommodation, but I’d had the foresight to book us into an ensuite room, which gave us essentially half of an entire railway carriage. The room wasn’t quite ready when we arrived — I was absolutely exhausted, having managed approximately two hours of sleep the previous night for reasons I’m not going to go into — so we sat in the restaurant, which looks out over Santos Beach and would, we suspected, be a rather pleasant spot to wait in better weather. We had a glass of wine, as one does, and waited. Fortunately we didn’t have to wait long.

Our room was in the very end carriage of the train, and it was lovely. A very comfortable bed, a surprisingly spacious bathroom for what is, when all is said and done, the inside of a railway carriage, and an absolutely ingenious fold-away metal sink that tucked neatly against the wall when not in use — the sort of practical space-saving solution that makes you wonder why more bathrooms don’t bother. We also had a small deck outside, jutting out at the end of the carriage and looking directly down onto the beach and the bay beyond. It was, by any measure, a beautiful location. We were too tired to appreciate it properly. We got into bed and fell asleep almost immediately.

🏖️ Cold Water and Brave Decisions

Two hours later we woke up, and something had happened outside while we’d been unconscious: the sun had come out. Not blazing, tropical sunshine of the sort you get further up the coast, but actual proper sunlight, on an actual proper afternoon. We could not, in good conscience, stay in bed.

We broke out the swimming costumes — always a slightly optimistic act in October in this part of the world — and headed down to Santos Beach. Mossel Bay’s position, tucked into a large, sweeping bay that faces roughly north-east, means it is sheltered from the full force of the Southern Ocean in a way that most beaches on this stretch of coastline simply aren’t. The bay’s orientation also explains why, according to the Guinness Book of Records, this Karoo-by-the-sea town has the second most moderate climate in the world — a remarkable claim for a relatively modest South African harbour town — and why Santos Beach holds the distinction of being the only north-facing beach in the whole of South Africa, which is why it catches so much more sun than you’d expect. The sea temperature in summer runs between 20 and 22 degrees Celsius; in winter it drops to 14 to 16 degrees. The average temperature from September through to May is 21 to 28 degrees, and from May to September around 16 to 21. So: not the Caribbean, but not unreasonable.

We thought the water would be cold, and we were absolutely correct. It was extremely cold. But the waves were gentle, the bay was calm, and the beach itself was lovely — a broad, clean sweep of sand with the old train sitting on the edge of it like the world’s most eccentric seafront hotel, which is essentially what it is. We lasted what I would describe as a respectable amount of time before deciding we’d had quite enough of the cold water and heading back to the carriages for a hot shower.