Suspend disbelief for a moment and take on board the legend of a Lost City. Add to it all the energy and artifice of theme park designers and hoteliers to produce a glittering reality and you have a tourist attraction that will compete with any in the world. Go one stage further and drop it into a volcano’s crater filled with a riotous profusion of exuberant vegetation, lions, rhinos and African wildlife, and you have something unique that outstrips any competition. Sun City, a couple of hours or so out of Johannesburg in the high veld, is a lavishly appointed theme park but without the overt neon-lit coarseness often associated with pleasure-domes.
Around 1978, the media mogul Sol Kerzner had his vision of creating the Las Vegas of Africa and hosting the world’s richest golf tournament. He did both. He needed money to build it — but more importantly, he needed water. In his expansive style, he simply built a lake. That now hosts water sports and provides sustenance for the two golf courses and gardens and gives the complex its incredible lushness. It is an object lesson in the transforming power of water. The complex stands as Kerzner’s answer to the ban on gambling in apartheid South Africa. In 1978, the North West Province existed as the black homeland of Bophutatswana which was independent of South Africa before unification in 1994.
The heart of the resort therefore has always been the Entertainment Center, which resounds with the noise of one-arm bandits in the several casinos.
Around it cluster world-class hotels, sprawling gardens, theaters and cinemas, cascading waterfalls and an incredible number of restaurants and entertainment activities that characterize Sun City. For the golfer, the greatest attraction is a chance to play at the Gary Player Country Club.
Today, Sun City rises like an oasis from the bushveld around it, and the fairways of the Gary Player Country Club annually play host to the Nedbank Golf Challenge, the world’s richest golf tournament that offers the top 12 available golfers on the planet the chance to compete for a first prize of $2-million. Most of the greatest names in the game have played here since the tournament’s inception in 1981, with a list of past champions including inaugural winner Johnny Miller, Seve Ballesteros, Bernhard Langer, Ian Woosnam, David Frost, Nick Price, Nick Faldo, Colin Montgomerie, Ernie Els and Sergio Garcia.
Its isolation as an artificial island of pleasure is enhanced by the background knowledge that just a short distance outside the gates to the complex in the Pilansberg National Park with real lions and 38 live Nile crocodiles listed as part of the water hazard on hole 13 of one of the two championship golf courses. That surely is enough to send a frisson down the most jaded accountant’s spine, as he sips his vintage sherbet looking into the African night, secure in one of the five star restaurants and wondering what is watching him watching it. Slough it is not.
To say that the resort has “something for everyone” is extreme understatement. The gardens round the center piece Palace Hotel — one of three in the park — have achieved Botanical Garden status and the crush of carefully tended vegetation studded with flowers and exotic plants remind the guests that they really are in a land of unchecked fertility.
Sun City was carved out of the bushveld as a custom- made pleasure park. Unlike Las Vegas that sprawls in garish confusion across a gridiron of roads in a desert, the park nestles in a bowl of rich greenery. With all its facilities, hidden by trees and bush, it is largely invisible from even a kilometer or two away.
For children, a dizzying number of water sports and physical activities involving lots of noise and laughing and copious amounts of ice cream — all under the supervision of remarkably alert-looking lifeguards — “gets the little darlings out of my hair” as one balding visitor from the UK put it. Seems to work.
One of the most popular attractions is the Valley of the Waves. It is a large lagoon with a wave machine capable of generating 1.8 meter waves every 90 seconds; it tumbles people over clearly in a most satisfactory way, because they go back for more. The water park has five challenging flume rides. The aptly named Temple of Courage allows swimmers to drop a heart-stopping 17 meters down a chute and under a bridge before splashing into a small pool at the foot of the slide. After that, most parents are in need of yet another bracing sherbet from one of the poolside kiosks, although children lap up the thrill. For the less adventurous visitor, a relaxed ride on the ‘Lazy River’ on a rubber float is about right.
Adults can do nothing; alternatively they can eat, shoot clays, take in the Super Bowl — Africa ‘s finest venue for concerts. Stars such as Queen, Bryan Adams, Frank Sinatra and Rod Stewart have performed at this 6,000 seat arena. It is also one of South Africa ‘s favourite venues for beauty pageants. The Sun City Resort spectacular is famed throughout South Africa as a glamorous sophisticated theater production. This stage revue is alive with energy and is famous for spectacular sets, trapeze acts and glorious costumes.
Or visitors can suspend themselves in hot-air balloons and watch game.If they get tired of the contrived charms of Sun City, there is always a visit to the crocodile farm (one of the biggest in the world) or a trip into the Pilansberg National Park next door.
The very capable Charlotte, frighteningly competent looking as she clips an efficient looking rifle in the cab of the safari-truck “just in case,” guides tourists around what is in effect wild bush. After the hedonistic temptations of Sun City, it is a salutary exercise to get out early in the morning as dawn breaks over the veld and remind yourself that this is Africa, full of things with teeth and claws. It makes the achievement of building the city even more incredible than it looks. And you get to meet fascinating creatures; inquisitive giraffes stare at you over the tops of trees and two-ton rhinos make interesting and non-negotiable traffic hazards.
Sun City boasts four hotels. The Cabanas — 380 of them — are the cheapest and largely a family option due to their location near the lake and children’s activities. They nestle in the ubiquitous greenery in a comfortable sort of way. The 340-room Sun City Hotel is a comfortable resort hotel — a towering wedge of a building — with all the facilities you would expect.
The 243-room Cascades though is one of the most sought-after hotels in Sun City. Set low in broad leafed gardens, the waterfalls and lush tropical gardens that surround it create an exotic, even romantic, atmosphere.
But for the ultimate in luxury and over-the-top splendor, it would be hard to beat the Palace of the Lost City, a member of the Leading Hotels of the World. With rates going up to $3000 plus per night, you would expect something quite extraordinary. The Palace hotel certainly provides it. From the life-size bronze elephant in the central courtyard to the Crystal Restaurant, the frescoed lobby with the ceiling that took 5,000 hours to paint, to the bedrooms where all the furniture is handmade uniquely for the room, nothing is done on any scale less than exotic. Sure, it is entirely “over the top” but with such wonderful energy and panache that even the most curmudgeonly visitor soon gets involved in the ultra-baroque extravagance of the place. “Didn’t think I’d like it,” said George from Walsall in the UK, found wandering in the upper reaches of the Palace Hotel on one of the tours of the building. “I only came for the cricket. It’s quite fantastic though.”
And that is the secret; fantasy made real. Sun City is a fantasy land and attends to every detail of the visitors stay with professionalism of the highest order and a cheery grin. No obsequious bowing and scraping, but a genuine sort of infectious friendliness and willingness to welcome guests with real warmth and competence.
And if you can’t be bothered to do anything, that’s just fine. They will even pack your suitcase for you when you leave. I’ve not yet figured out how they fold shirts like that.