Steve and Cathy's Blog

Looking down into The Big Hole

Cathy is wide awake at 6:00am, and Steve follows at 6:40. We both slept very well, but are aware that we made a couple of long stops somewhere during the night. We also climbed up out of the Western Cape from 477 meters in elevation to 959 meters through a coastal mountain range and along the enormous escarpment of the South African plateau. In order to accomplish that, we have gone through a mountain pass, as well as four tunnels of 0.5 miles, 0.5 miles, 1.5 miles and 9 miles in length, all completed in 1989 to replace an older route opened in 1876. We are now in the middle of the Great Karoo, a semi desert that encompasses a large region between Cape Town and De Aar. All the previous days, we have seen mountains in the distance on both sides of the train. Now we primarily see very dry conditions that look very much like the scenes out of old movies where the settlers heading from St. Louis to Denver had to cross. It looks very forbidding, and for sure it is pretty empty. We do see occasional antelope, and also some cattle. We also see windmills once in a while, as there is ample underground water for livestock.

We head for breakfast around 7:30, and are the only ones awake except for Kreg. Cathy has a ham and cheese omelet and Steve two fried eggs and bacon (back bacon, which is like fried ham to me, as opposed to what we usually eat, which they call streaky bacon). Both of us enjoy a South African beef sausage the name of which escapes us. There is an elaborate fruit and yogurt buffet, and we share some of that as well.

Because of the desolation of the area, we have no idea where we are exactly. Our goal is to get to Kimberley, where we will disembark to go to The Big Hole and Kimberley Diamond Museum. The schedule says we are to arrive there by 14h30 (2:30pm), but that schedule is shot to hell. When we ask Daphne what she estimates our arrival to be, she says “I will be able to tell you that when we reach De Aar.” Hmmm, this doesn’t bode well for seeing Kimberley at all, as it is 9hr00, we are not even close to De Aar (I guess), Kimberley is 200 miles beyond De Aar, and our pace looks to be around 50mph. The urgency is that both the museum and The Big Hole close at 16h30, and we do very much want to spend a couple of hours there.

We head for the lounge for a pleasant hour or two reading. One of the very smart rules on Rovos Rail is that cell phones and laptops are not to be used outside of our compartment. Mr. Vos considers it distracting to the other passengers and a disservice to the aim of the trip, which is to provide the ambience of the very best railroad journey imaginable. Good for him. There is no WiFi, no cell service, nothing to take us away from taking in all that Rovos Rail has to offer, which is wonderful. Steve has another cup of coffee, Cathy some water. We read and watch the scenery roll by.

Around 10hr30, we head back to the compartment. I have just got to write a couple of posts before I find myself a week behind. And besides, maybe just maybe, if we lie down, we might just fall asleep again. Last night was a late night for us, and the gentle swaying of the train is very conducive to catching a quick nap. So we are there until lunch.

The gong goes off at 12hr30, and another festive wine-infused meal has begun. Funny, when we reach the dining car, the place is almost full. Something tells us our traveling companions are hungrier than we are. Cathy and I sit with Joanne and BJ, who were originally from Valley Forge PA and moved to a small town on the eastern shore of Maryland about four years ago. He owns an insurance agency that specializes in selling insurance to municipalities. He’s apparently quite good at it, as they have traveled all over the world. They are a very pleasant couple to have lunch with.

Lunch menu: hearts of palm served on grilled aubergine (eggplant) with sweet chili and coriander dressing; balsamic and lemon marinated slices of ostrich fillet (I didn’t eat mine, Steve ate his, he said it tasted like beef or venison, BJ ate mine), served on a quinoa tabbouleh salad with cherry tomatoes, mint and cucumber with sweet mustard dressing, duo of Huguenot and Amabutho cheddar cheeses with sundried tomato chili and black pepper savory jam, grapes, almonds and a tiny baguette, fruit salad with shortbread and mascarpone cream. Yummy!

Lunch ends around 13hr45 (1:45pm). Due to our tardiness, new arrangements have been made to get us to Kimberley on time. The train will now stop in the middle of nowhere about fifty miles southwest of Kimberley at around 3:00pm, and we will be transferred to 20-passenger buses for the drive to The Big Hole and diamond museum. So that is what we do, and it’s a good thing.

We board the buses, the train pulls out and we get on the road. Within five minutes, we are streaking past our train in a driving thunderstorm. The road is as straight as an arrow and there is very little traffic. We have to be doing at least 80mph, so in about forty minutes we are at our destination. We are with our guide Frank from the start of the ride until we get back on the train. He gives us tons of information, of course.

South Africa was the third country in which diamonds were discovered, the first two being India (3,000 years ago) and Brazil (in the 1700s, I think). In 1866, some children were playing on the bank of the Orange River, and one of them found this interesting rock that he brought home. His parents showed it to a neighbor, who asked if he could have it. Not having any idea what it was, the parents handed it over. The neighbor took it to be analyzed, and it was found to be a 21-carat diamond, which he sold for 500 pounds.

Now the race was on. Within a couple of years, 50,000 people had headed for the area, traversing the aforementioned Great Karoo by foot, walking next to the wagons of stuff they had brought. At that time, no one really knew how diamonds were formed, and, because they kept finding them in riverbeds, conventional wisdom held that somehow they were formed in rivers.

In actuality, they are formed around 120 miles beneath the surface of the earth under tremendous heat and pressure and are forced to the surface through seams of coal through volcanic action. They are found in the “pipe” of volcanic stone now known as Kimberlite. There are sixteen such pipes in the Kimberley area, The Big Hole being one of them. The diamonds were originally found in riverbeds because, over time, they were washed down from the mountains into the rivers.

So from 1866 on, it was a madhouse in the Kimberley area, with thousands of individual claims being staked, especially when a diamond was found by a farmer named Johann de Beers, who had a 25,000-acre farm in the area that, per chance, was sitting right smack dab on one of the volcanic pipes. The laws were such that, while de Beers indeed owned the property, practically anyone could stake a claim on it to exploit what was underneath the ground. De Beers had no choice to accept that, but he was able to collect “rent” from each of the stakeholders, which made him a wealthy man indeed.

Obviously, all this mining activity attracted opportunists and entrepreneurs as well, in particular an opportunist named Barney Barnato and a shrewd businessman named Cecil Rhodes. Neither one cared for the other, but in 1888, they sat down and hammered out an agreement to work together in order to control the production and marketing of diamonds for their own benefit. Thus the DeBeers Consolidated Mines Ltd. organization was formed, and within a few years redefined the industry.

To this day, DeBeers effectively controls the diamond market, as they produce 65% of the world’s diamonds. They also control the diamond mining industry, and thus very strictly control the flow of diamonds that come to market each year, and, therefore, the price of those stones. While they are headquartered in London, they do have an office (that apparently is opulent beyond belief but into which few people are allowed and even fewer people work) in Kimberley. There is also a fourteen-story building where diamonds from the world around (especially Botswana and Namibia, two neighboring countries) are sent to be classified. For security purposes, only floors 14 to 7 are used for such purpose. The building has huge windows on one side for the reason that natural light must be used to properly examine each stone.

We receive all this information as Frank our guide walks us though the Diamond Museum adjacent to The Big Hole, and continues the discussion as we traverse a fifty-yard long walkway out to the observation area overlooking The Big Hole. This is the single largest man-made hole in the world. Man-made in that it was completely dug by hand from around 1871 until 1914, when it was closed due to the market for diamonds collapsing at the outbreak of World War I. It is presently 705-feet deep, 1,519-feet in diameter and covers 42 acres. In its heyday, 50,000 miners worked there, and the mine produced 6,000 pounds (13,600,000 carats) of diamonds until it closed.

At the time when the mine was open, there was no market for industrial diamonds, and those not of gem quality were deemed worthless and not worth separating from the Kimberlite dust from which diamonds were taken. These mine tailings were spread out over an area the width of the mine for five kilometers and to a depth of several feet. Today, DeBeers is now reprocessing this dust to extract the industrial diamonds.

Now here is one last interesting aspect of The Big Hole that illustrates how DeBeers controls the world market in these stones. There are three mines presently operating in the area, all DeBeers. But why did The Big Hole never reopen after the market returned in post-WWI? The answer is in the need to control supply in order to control the prices. It was less expensive to open new mines, leaving The Big Hole as a “vault” that could be opened sometime in the future when the diamonds still remaining would be needed. DeBeers still owns the place; they’re just sitting on it until the right time. The power of this company in their market is overwhelming.

There is much, much more to say about this fascinating industry. Cathy and I aren’t all that interested in diamonds, but the industry itself is unique. But we need to move on, both figuratively and literally.

As we are touring the Diamond Museum and The Big Hole, our train has proceeded from where they left us off to Kimberley itself. It is waiting for us all at the station, and off we go around 5:00pm. Cathy and I elect to relax in our compartment, preparing ourselves for another gastronomic workout due to start at 19h30.

The gong sounds and we all stampede into the dining car. Again it is practically full, and we get the sense that the twenty Norwegians have gotten there well before the gong. Whatever. Cathy and I sit at a table for two opposite a table for four (that is the arrangement throughout the car) where M & J and Kreg and Judy are seated. Dinner commences.

Sweet potato and lychee soup with peanut butter cream, shrimp and scallops on creamy pea mousse with green veggies, Dalewood mushroom Brie with figs, arugula and melba toast, dark chocolate fondant with fresh berries and vanilla ice cream. We had just the ice cream and berries because chocolate keeps us awake. Obviously, the courses are accompanied by South African wine in very generous proportion.

As in the previous evening, many retire to the Lounge Car (for cocktails no less!) while your humble correspondents hit the sack. For us, this train has so far lived up to its expectations, the observation car disappointment notwithstanding. The travel agency and Rovos Rail recovered nicely getting us to Kimberley in time for a tour. The other delays we have experienced can be laid at the foot of South African Rail. We keep our fingers crossed that our progress during the night will be good so that we will indeed reach Pretoria in good time.