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Published: December 9th 2007
About 2-3 hours north of Joberg, they say every plant in Sun City was imported especially. It's set just below an artificial 18,000 hectare game park called Pilanesberg, where a load of animals have also been imported.
Constructed in the mid 80s, Sun City was set up the haven of choice for the golf and gambling-loving white folk of Africa. The copious staff live on site in villages, and there are 3 (or four, depending on how you count them) hotels. Last week they hosted the million dollar Gary Player golf event. This week it was Miss South Africa.
They were (or at least claimed to be) fully booked expect for one room in the main hotel so we nabbed it. Contrary to all expectations, Sun City is not terribly luxurious. I guess if Las Vegas didn't keep reinventing itself, tearing down old hotels to build Celine Dion theme fountains, it might feel a bit like Sun City does now.
We refused to stay in the first poky ground floor room they offered us. The second room was quite a lot better. I think it was destined for a conference delegate who decided not to come. His
conference t-shirt was thoughtfully left on our bed.
Sun City is a funny old place. We didn't really warm to it. In fact, there was so little sun on offer, we felt the trades misdescription act might come into play. Sun City probably makes for more than its fair share of carbon emissions, so perhaps with the odd weather patterns it reaps what it has sewn.
There are activities aplenty - water-skiing, golf, cinema, segway, and a tremendous collection of early 1990s video games (which caused me to lament the sad lack of development of the genre in this age of Wii).
The artificial surf pond had its 2 metre waves suspended, due to mudslides reducing visibility in the water to nil.
We tried the Segway, which is a two wheeled machine which you stand on and which through extraordinarily clever use of gyros keeps you upright at all times; goes forward or backwards as you lean and turns using a twist on one of the handlebars. After a few minutes we were scooting around the golf course happily. After half an hour we were sopping wet, as a cloudburst nailed us. "Did you choose the
waterworld tour?" the guy at the Segway shop asked us, offering a towel.
We tried a little golf, but are so out of practice, felt we'd need to take lessons before we'd be allowed to lessons. Dozens of South African blokes (or "okes", in the local patois) in similar coloured t-shirts crowded the fairways. We watched them over a couple of ice cold Namibian beers as a few crossed the clubhouse terrace to begin the back nine. "Who was that calling you?". "Eet wuz the orfice". "Tell dem to fuk orf".
Unashamedly catering to the common denominator, Sun City would not know or care about the difference between film noir and pinot noir. Unless you can get a fantastic deal on a room, we'd say go as a day trip from Joberg or just give it the big miss. Some times you don't warm to a place but are glad to have gone for the experience. Sun City is not one of those places.
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Andrew Jackson
non-member comment
Pilanesberg National Park
I would like to reply to your comment with regards to Pilanesberg. Firstly Pilanesberg is a 57 000 hectare reserve and yes most of the Wildlife was introduced back into the area ( due to them being removed by farmers and human settlers) but what criteria do you use to rate it as artificial. The giant strides in Wildife management that have been made in Pilanesberg over the last 20 years have been instrumental in the conservation of Wildlife not only in South Africa but also in the whole of Africa. Currently Pilanesberg is a haven for some of the most endangered wildlife species globally such as the African Wild Dog and is the 5 most important Rhino population on planet earth. They also have a good population of Disease free Buffalo and Lion and the lions are considered to be one of the most important genetically diverse populations in the country and are highly saught after by reserve that are considering re-introducing Lions to areas where they have been eradicated by the wanton destruction of man. With the modern expansion of the human population Globally, areas such as Pilanesberg should be regarded as reminders of what Africa once was and currently plans are under way to extend the reserve to join up to Madikwe Game Reserve to the north and give a total area of 245 000 hectares. Andrew Jackson