Charles Apple

It was a long week here at newspaper central in Johannesburg. Folks worked hard putting out the week’s papers and getting ready for changes that are to come.

The three intrepid consultants visiting South Africa this month decided to celebrate Saturday with a drive up to the famous Sun City to see what all the fuss is about.

So after sleeping in late, we rendezvoused in Sandton, a pricey suburb north of Johannesburg where my two colleagues are staying and we set out for the two-hour trip northwest to Sun City.

View Sun City map in a larger map

Our first stop was the gorgeous little lakeside town of Hartbeespoort, nestled among the mountains of the northern Gauteng province.

The area is primarily a tourist and retirement center, as far as we could tell. Horse stables, marinas, shopping centers and nice homes dotted the landscape.

We found this charming little welcome center and restaurant that recalled the Dutch origins of the Afrikaans folks who settled in the area.

I’m a sucker for a pun, so I just had to shoot a picture of the name of this little shop.

As we prepared to drive into Hartbeespoort proper, we found this huge billboard blocking the view. The ironic thing is that if the billboard hadn’t been there, we would have seen almost exactly the scene in the huge photo on the billboard.

I think I saw that very thing once in an Al Jaffee cartoon in Mad magazine. Kind of funny, but kind of sad.

We decided to stop for lunch at a small Chinese restaurant in Hartbeespoort. Much to my amusement, we found this country-and-western karaoke-style entertainer serenading the entire shopping center.

His sign says “die Rebel,” which basically means “the Rebel,” in case you’re wondering. The Afrikaans article “die” gives his sign a weird twist, for us English speakers.

As I took these photos, the guy was singing “Sweet Home Alabama.” Seriously. He seemed friendly enough. But I wasn’t about to approach him to find out whether or not he was actually from Alabama.

The little yellow tent was selling CDs of die Rebel. I can’t imagine why. I can’t imagine wanting to listen to more of this guy.

Please note the triple-decked amps and speakers on either side of die Rebel.

Triple-decked.

Despite all this caterwauling, we decided to stay and eat anyway. Here were my traveling companions for the day and with whom I’m working here in Johannesburg this month: News design consultant Peter Ong of Sydney, Australia and Adonis Durado, a fabulous magazine designer currently working in Bangkok.

When we resumed our journey, we got a closer look at the lake and the beautiful houses lining its shore.

Cute little shops and restaurants lined the friendly roads.

But, y’know, you didn’t really need to visit a shop in order to buy stuff here. At every traffic stop, dozens of street vendors strolled from car to car, offering hats, sunglasses, water, cookware, apparel and hand-carved souvenirs.

One gentleman explained from us that he and most of his colleagues were from the country of Mali, way up in northwest Africa, thousands of miles from here.

Not a lot of these guys were making sales. One wonders what kind of living they make.

After waiting through several cycles of stop lights, we finally got to the front of the line, where we drove through a single-lane tunnel…

…and reappeared on the other side of the mountain to find Hartbeespoort Dam.

The dam is very tall but not so wide. You can see how narrow the driveway is across the top, which is why traffic backs up here so easily.

I didn’t get a good look out the right side of the car. Way down there somewhere, past Peter’s arm, were the Crocodile and Magalies rivers.

What we didn’t know was that Peter’s GPS device was taking us on a very long, very scenic route to Sun City.

The bad news was that it took us a very long time to get there. Luckily for me, Peter and Adonis are very good company. Much better than I am, I suspect.

The good news was that the scenery was… well, very scenic:

These purple flowering trees were everywhere. My South African guidebook suggests they’re jacaranda trees. All I know was that they were purple and gorgeous.

Before we got to Sun City, the sun had taken the rest of the day off, leaving the sky to large, blue clouds and huge raindrops. They blended in well with the hazy mountains in the distance.

Yeah, we laughed our asses off at this sign:

Finally, we were there. The famous Sun City.

Sun City is a huge entertainment complex located in an area called Bophuthatswana.

Bophuthatswana was a black “homeland,” officially “independent” from the rest of the country, according to the apartheid government. In the late 1970s, a developer named Sol Kerzner took advantage of this homeland “independence” by building a resort where he could offer things generally frowned upon in the rest of South Africa: Casinos and Vegas-type showgirls, for example. The project eventually included luxury hotels — four of them, in fact — a water park and a golf course designed by PGA great Gary Player, a native of South Africa.

The place became known to Americans when big-name musicians turned down offers to perform in the huge indoor venue here. The catch phrase at the time — which I remember well — was: “I ain’t gonna play Sun City.”

How many of those Artists United Against Apartheid from 1985 — the year after I graduated from college — did you recognize?

I didn’t catch them all myself, but included are reportedly:

• Pat Benatar
• Jackson Browne
• Miles Davis
• Bob Dylan
• Peter Gabriel
• Daryl Hall and John Oates
• Herbie Hancock
• Darlene Love
• Bonnie Raitt
• Keith Richards
• Run DMC
• Bruce Springsteen
  
• Ringo Starr
• U2

All that ended with the death of apartheid in the early 1990s, though. Big acts play here all the time now.

The place is very, very expensive. We had thought about booking rooms for the night and driving back on Sunday, but we abandoned the idea when I discovered the cheapest rooms in the entire place cost the equivalent of nearly $300 a night. Which seemed a bit exorbitant — especially since we each have nice hotel rooms already paid for, just two hours away in Johannesburg.

Sun City charged us R120 — just under $30 — to get onto the property. Then, we had to leave our car behind and take transportation up to the hotel and entertainment areas.

They’re building a nice elevated train system to ferry folks around, but it’s not open quite yet…

…therefore, we took a shuttle bus.

We had been told there was a huge casino at the heart of the place, and there certainly was. None of us were the gambling type, so we easily passed up the huge numbers of slot machines and other betting games.

I have to admit, though, it was all very nicely presented. I visited a casino earlier this year in Louisiana and found it loud, smoky and a bit obnoxious. This place was none of those. In fact, the Sun City casino was gorgeous.

I got a laugh from this “public service message”-type sign mounted in the lobby of the casino:

“Winners know when to stop.” Heh. True winners, I suspect, know not to get started in the first place.

Just behind the casino was an extensive “casino” for kids — a huge token-operated arcade with every sort of electronic game imaginable.

The idea is that the kids can play coin-operated games until they get old enough to gamble. Never mind the fact that many of the games actually are gambling, I’d argue. Like, for instance, this game where you slide your coin down a chute and attempt to knock huge piles of other coins off a moving shelf. What falls off the shelf, you can keep.

I wondered of Priscilla Presley authorized that game. Somehow, I doubt it.

The place also contained a huge music venue — called the Superbowl — and a sizable number of shops, stores and restaurants.

The coolest thing I found there, however, was this TV sports amphitheater:

Sports fans plop down in any chair to watch the game — in this case, rugby; very popular among Afrikaans-speaking locals — on an enormous, movie-screen-sized monitor.

Fans can buy beer and hot dogs from vendors at the top of the seating area.

I wondered why I’ve never seen one of these in the U.S. I’ve been to a restaurant-style movie theater, but I’ve never thought about setting up a sports bar in an amphitheater setting. Add a few waitresses in cheerleader outfits and you’d have an incredibly lucrative idea, I think.

None of us really dig rugby, so we headed over to a small pub where a crowd was watching soccer on the large LCD screen there.

I don’t really “get” soccer, either, but these folks certainly do. They seemed to hang on to every little moment. I can just imagine how much fun they’ll have next year when World Cup matches are played in this country.

Adonis — who you see in that picture, above — had the brains to run back over to the rugby game and buy hot dogs for us to munch. These were, without doubt, some of the largest hot dogs I had ever seen. They didn’t even come close to fitting in the oversized buns in which they were served.

I found myself entertained by the routine the bartender went through in order to serve the draft beer I ordered. He placed a fresh mug upside down on a nozzle…

…that coated the inside of the glass with incredibly cold water.

Only when the glass was all nice and frosty did the bartender draw the beer…

…pouring it nice and slow, of course, in order to keep the suds to a minimum.

Beer and a hot dog. In any country, is there a better way to spend a Saturday afternoon? I don’t think so.

The soccer game was very exciting. We saw a touchdown or field goal or home run or whatever the hell it was. And then we resumed our tour.

We walked all the way through the entertainment complex, past the convention center and out the back door of the building, where we came across an enormous water park called the Valley of the Waves.

There are pools and water slides and “lazy river” inner-tube rides off all sorts here.

The large pool constantly generates gently rolling waves for the kiddies. The floor here looks like sand, but it’s actually painted concrete, just like any other pool.

And while the kids frolic in the water or play volleyball, mom and dad can enjoy a poolside drink. Very nice.

There are a lot of things to do here in addition to the water park. We didn’t get out to see the golf course — which is supposed to be world-class — or the animal farm or stables or train or boat rides. There are four separate hotels here. It’d have taken us a full day or two to see everything.

This is called Monkey Spring Plaza:

Water appears to pour from the hands of the stone monkeys. I guess it could be worse.

Here, you see the skyline of the most exclusive of Sun City’s hotels, the Palace of the Lost City:

The whole place has a decidedly Indiana Jones feel.

Evidently, you can tour the hotel even if you’re not staying there, but I didn’t figure that out until long after we had left. It’s a very expensive place to stay. The cheapest room in the palace costs R4,655 — the equivalent of $632.47 per night!

In Disneyesque fashion, the Sun City folks developed a cute little tale about the Lost City. Here, Peter and Adonis read the myth regarding the hotel.

The same applies as you turn around and head back into the entertainment center. These huge doors reminded me of King Kong:

And for good reason, it turned out. I found this brass plate lurking behind one of the doors:

It’s all very tacky and gaudy or all very well-done, depending on how charitable you feel. I was appalled by the prices of everything but I also found myself impressed by how well-built and well-designed everything was. I guess all this quality costs big money.

Here’s the rear entrance of the entertainment complex, which appears to be carved out of rock:

Now, we all know there’s no freakin’ way that’s carved out of rock. At Disney World, it’d be fiberglass or something. But sure enough, it was real rock. Or, perhaps, concrete done up to look like real rock.

As if the elephants weren’t impressive enough…

…the 40-foot-tall cheetah was downright scary. Nice kitty.

I did happen to notice tiny light bulbs set into the cheetah’s eyes. At night, I’ll bet this cat looks very cool.

We piled back into the shuttle bus, hopped in Peter’s Mercedes and — ignoring the GPS this time — flew back “home” in no time.

Even as the day drew to a close, the scenery stayed beautiful. This small range of mountains, for example, all leaned to the right.

I wondered what geological forces could italicize an entire mountain range.

We finished our evening with steaks at Nelson Mandela Square in Sandton.

The plan for today: Sleep late again, get together around midday and then drive through downtown Johannesburg to the Apartheid Museum southwest of town. This is the place I tried to find two weeks ago with no success. Now, of course, I’ve done my homework. I know exactly where it is.

I hope.

This entry was posted on Sunday, October 18th, 2009 at 4:26 am and is filed under Travelogue, Trip to South Africa. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.