(FORTUNE Magazine) – Sure, living among the wildebeests can be fabulous. But sometimes what a person really needs is to watch the scenery pass by while lounging in a marble bathtub, surrounded by lilies and roses, a butler only a phone call away when you realize--horrors!--that you've drained the last drop of Veuve Clicquot from your crystal flute.

On South Africa's famous Blue Train, two days can be spent rolling through the country's cape or up to Zimbabwe's Victoria Falls, nestled in a luxury few of us outside royal circles have even imagined. You'll be fed like a fatted calf, albeit on African haute cuisine, sip the finest of local wines, and nap on linen sheets in your Italian beechwood-inlaid stateroom.

It'll cost you--$1,000 a day--but that's not so hard to rationalize when you consider that the price includes meals and alcohol and breaks down to little more than $1 per spoiled-rotten minute. All and all, not too, er, wilde-beastly.

--REBECCA ASCHER-WALSH

27-12-334-8459; bluetrain.co.za