ADVENTUROUS TRAIN JOURNEYS – PART II
The Elephant Express, Zimbabwe
The Route: Dete to Ngamo, Zimbabwe
Duration: 75 miles, 3.5 hours
The Fare: $300 (for the train, not per person)
The Adventure: Spot elephants and lions from your train seat
The first time I drove a train I worried most about animals wandering onto the tracks. Zebras, kudu, lions—all such unpredictable beasts. Mostly it was the elephants, though. There are a lot of those in this corner of Zimbabwe. Think 50,000 of them.
Anyone can drive the Elephant Express; you just have to ask. The train itself is less of a train and more of a trolley—a one-car locomotive with open-air seats under a proud metal roof. The train was custom built using Land Cruiser parts by a former game ranger named Mark Butcher, a Zimbabwean who runs a safari company called Imvelo that operates in and around Hwange National Park, Africa’s fourth largest, southeast of Victoria Falls.
When you stay at Imvelo Safari’s camps in the area, the train will take you the final 50 miles from a small depot town called Dete to the camps. It’s a helluva way to start an African bush adventure. Imagine rolling through the coolest zoo ever if zoos had no fences.
Imvelo under Butcher has been instrumental in reintroducing white rhinos into the area, while giving local communities ownership of the conservation and tourism opportunities. Now you can go for runs with the Cobras, a squad of local rangers assigned to protect the rhinos, and watch how a pair of Belgian malinois can track down would-be poachers. Coolest of all, the Cobras will take you walking with the rhinos as they graze on rich grasses.
On the Elephant Express we trundled through mopane and teakwood forests and across the grassy veldt. The tracks, gun-barrel straight, are some of the only working vestiges of the Cape-to-Cairo railway, the 19th century British imperial boondoggle that aimed to tie the continent together from Egypt to South Africa.
After sitting in the conductor’s chair, I retired to the rear, letting the sweet African air purl around me as curious pachyderms emerged from the brush. Gangly giraffes punctuated the grasslands like goofy exclamation points. I watched lilac breasted rollers (birds) flitter through the trees and spied impalas hiding under the acacias. Later, I’d watch a lioness carry her tiny, fuzzy cubs over the tracks one by one. — Tim Neville
The Rocky Mountaineer: First Passage to the West
The Route: Vancouver, British Columbia to Banff, Alberta
Duration: 600 miles, two days
The Fare: From $1,980 USD per person for two days on board Rocky Mountaineer’s SilverLeaf or GoldLeaf Service, including two breakfasts and two lunches and one night hotel in Kamloops.
The Adventure: Travel along the iconic Spiral Tunnels, the Continental Divide, and Lake Louise.
Outside the train’s glass-domed coach, cornfields and cranberry bogs ran toward the horizon, punctuated by ramshackle red barns. Although I grew up not far from here, watching the bucolic landscape go by at the pace of the railroad allowed me to notice these details as if for the first time. The Rocky Mountaineer’s First Passage to the West journey began in my hometown of Vancouver on the coast of British Columbia, skirting the Fraser River through the interior Okanagan region before climbing into the Rocky Mountains and ending at the resort town of Banff, cradled by soaring, snow-encrusted peaks.
Over the two-day journey, which included a night in the riverside town of Kamloops, I scampered to the observation deck at every opportunity, leaning over the guardrail to watch the train snake through the landscape with the wind in my hair. I took in tawny, arid hills dotted with aromatic ponderosa pine and sage, the sparkling Fraser River tumbling by, and the jagged Rockies emerging in Yoho National Park, marking the Continental Divide that follows the ridge of the Rockies between B.C. and Alberta. Along the route, Rocky Mountaineer guides imbued the landscape with an interpretive history of the region’s gold rush and 19th-century Canadian Pacific Railway landmarks, as well as an understanding of Indigenous culture in the two provinces.
The town of Kamloops is marked by sandstone canyons and forested hills, as well as sprawling mountain bike trails. The crenelated silhouette of Castle Mountain marks the train’s arrival into Banff, where endless hiking and climbing adventures await. Above Lake Louise in Banff National Park, hike to a historic teahouse at Lake Agnes, continuing to Big Beehive or Devil’s Thumb, or head deeper into the backcountry along the three-day Skoki Loop Trail. On the nearby B.C. side of the Rockies in Kootenay National Park is the four-day Rockwall Trail, a stunning backcountry route that ends at Floe Lake, and straddling the two provinces is a trek in Mount Assiniboine Provincial Park.
Before kicking off the journey in Vancouver, head into iconic Stanley Park with Talaysay Tours to understand the old-growth forest through the lens of the Coast Salish Indigenous peoples. Grab a paddle board and glide over English Bay at sunset, or discover the coastal mountains on trails that end at glacial lakes in Garibaldi Park, an hour’s drive from Vancouver. — Chloe Berge
Empire Builder, Chicago to Seattle
The Route: Chicago to Seattle or Portland (at the Spokane station, designated cars are attached to a different train heading to Oregon, while the remainder heads to Seattle)
Duration: 2,206 miles; 46 hours
The Adventure: Travel along Glacier National Park and the Pacific Northwest
The atmosphere is electric as the diesel engine rumbles out of Chicago’s Union Station. Sitting aboard Amtrak’s famous Empire Builder train – one of the country’s most scenic train rides – the other passengers and I would spend more than 46 hours traversing seven states (eight, if you count Oregon), watching the green rolling hills of the Midwest give way to the desolate beauty of the plains, before craning our necks to see the mammoth mountains of Montana rising from the ground.
Most riders were doing the route nonstop, but I was getting off at Glacier National Park, the undisputed crown jewel of the route, for a few days of fun and adventure before jumping back on the train to complete my journey.
In the dining car, staff paired up unlikely dinner companions every meal. They say there are no strangers on an Amtrak, only people you haven’t been forced to make awkward small talk with as you all squish together in an undersized booth. Luckily, we all had the same percolating excitement about our epic train adventure. Every passenger was either on their first big train journey or their one-hundredth.
Disembarking at the West Glacier station just outside the park boundaries, I watched the train continue west, the smell of diesel smoke permeating the air. By the time I found my rental car in the parking lot, that smell had been replaced by the scent of aspen forests and recent rain.
Over the next few days, I paddled Lake McDonald, where I watched the mirror reflection of the mountains grow closer with each paddle stroke. Venturing to the east side of the park, I sang out-of-tune country songs while hiking to Hidden Lake, hoping that any grizzly within earshot would run in the opposite direction. I floated the middle fork of the Flathead River with my fly rod and a guide from Glacier Anglers and Outfitters, catching (and releasing) a dozen or more cutthroat and rainbow trout. If it wasn’t a perfect four days, it was damn close. — Robert Annis
