Sun City
The AfroDisney Memories from 7 Years Ago

Created October 2007

About two hours' drive from Pretoria, in the Northern Province, locates the famous resort town of Sun City. Though it is called "city", Sun City is more like a huge entertainment complex than a real city (Wasn't Las Vegas just like that before?). It is not really popular among the backpacker circle due to the tremendous high cost to stay there. "Lonely Planet" even encouraged travelers to drive there from Pretoria for only a daytrip and return to their Pretoria hostels for the night to save accommodation cost. While the famous Contiki (for travelers 18 to 35) didn't include Sun City in their tour route, neither did other youth oriented tour operators. Fortunately, in the Taiwanese package tour I joined in 2000, Sun City was included in the itinerary. Possibly because it was the off-peak season (July, winter in South Africa), the Company even arranged us to stay in the most luxurious hotel in Sun City for two nights!

Passing by the monotonous farmlands in the vast Northern Province, there was not much to see along the way. Obviously Sun City was planned to build up in the middle of nowhere (Again, this is sort of like Las Vegas). I am not sure if it was related to the former apartheid regime’s paranoia that it should be as far away from its political turmoil as possible. Good things are that Sun City does offer many job opportunities for residents in this impoverish region. The only bonus to visit here, aside from fun inside the “Complex”, is the Pilansberg National Park. Though not as big or famous as Kruger National Park, it was said to have better wildlife viewing. I was glad that we did have a morning safari the next day.

We checked into the "Palace of the Lost City". As its name suggested, it is really palatial. With two large outdoor swimming pools, beautiful surrounding marble statues, and cascades all over its garden, we were impressed by its luxury. I also had a marble bathtub in my room and rose pedals over my bed. I could understand why it is ranked among the best hotels in Africa. In the "Lonely Planet South Africa: 2000 version," I found a standard room here would start from $320. This was that rare moment I actually was glad that I came on a prepaid tour package.

Outside the Palace, there were three other less luxurious hotels, a very large casino (though not really big compared a average Las Vegas casino), the "Valley of the Waves" where a long stretch of artificial sandy beach, lapping with waves you could surf on (generated by machine), was in place. There was also an artificial tropical rainforest that offers many trailheads to give us flavors of an African jungle. Some ancient ruins could be spotted here and there, though I was not sure their style imitated Greek, Roman, Mayan, or just a mix of everything. And then there was a little volcano that erupted a few times a day; a drawbridge where you could feel earthquake (in my view, not scary enough). All those set-ups were cute but in fact all not very interesting. It was also too cold to enjoy the beach or any water sports, thus further lower the fun factor. Because pretty much everything was faked, the whole complex felt quite tacky and cheesy. In many ways, it was an Afro-Disneyland. Ironically, it had as much to do with African heritage as Euro-Disneyland with French culture.

So when next morning we had a chance to safari into the Pilansberg National Park. I was glad that we could finally encounter something 'authentically African.'

Building on craters of an extinct volcano, Pilansberg National Park looked like a typical African savannah. Maybe because it was in the depth of winter, the grass was dry and low. Leaving at 7:45 am, we could obviously felt the chills of early winter morning. I guess animals felt that too, so they were hidden most of the time. We ended up not seeing too much wildlife after a whole morning’s search. Overall, we saw six rhinoceroses, three elephants, two zebras, numerous wildebeest, and a group of African vervet monkeys. However, we did not see any lion, leopard, cheetah, hippo or even usually ubiquitous giraffes. This was the first wildlife safari I had ever had in Africa, but it turned out a disappointment. Maybe it was the wrong season or maybe we were just not lucky enough.

After returning to Sun City, I just took the whole afternoon off, not doing anything (not even lying on the faked beach to enjoy the lapping sound of the faked waves). Maybe this was just a vacation should be – chilling out and doing nothing. I would learn to enjoy art of nothingness the next time I visited Africa, 7 years later.

Overall, I would not recommend Sun City, especially for people traveling all the way to South Africa from North America or Australia. It is just a big theme park. If you enjoy luxury of an exclusive resort, there are many places like that in Caribbean, Southeast Asia, and South Pacific. Traveling to Africa is for the wildlife, friendly Africans and their unique culture. I am glad that second time around, I would finally experience a lot of it.

Back to 2007.