May 15: Pilanesberg/Sun City
Ken had been unable to make his tee time reservation for the Sun
City golf course, so we were up shortly after the crack of dawn
for him to make a call ahead. We were staying on the northern
edge of the reserve, while Sun City is on the south (the reserve
is in the remains of a very old, roughly circular volcanic caldera
about forty kilometers across). To get there, then, we took a
more or less southerly route, albeit a fairly roundabout one in
search of lions. We didn't find any, but we did see just about
every kind of antelope there is, including springboks who were
actually springing. They do a peculiar sort of hopping run, as
though they were four-footed kangaroos.
We ran into some nonsense at the front gate to Sun City. It looks
like one of the ways of keeping out the riffraff is to charge
admission. They immediately give it back to you in the form of
chips, but if you can't afford the R40 a head (about $6.50), you
can't get in. Having just come over the border, we had no rand.
It didn't surprise me that they didn't take dollars or pula, but
I didn't even see any indication that they took plastic. After
a halting argument with the woman at the gate, she waved us through
and told us to pay her later.
Sun City, which Little Steven van Zandt and friends famously refused
to play some years ago, is a peculiar entertainment complex built
on a hill in the northern part of South Africa. It consists for
the most part of several hotels, a gold course, and a water park.
It is, from a certain point of view, an abomination, albeit an
architecturally ambitious one. Big theme hotel-casinos in the
middle of nowhere? It's Vegas in South Africa. America has much
to answer for. It's garrish. It's tacky. The movie theater was
evenly divided between six-month-old Hollywood films (all of which
we saw on the flight over) and what I presume was South African
porn (which, let's face it, would have been too ironic to show
on Virgin Atlantic). I noted smugly that despite the end of apartheid,
all of the help was black and all of the guests were white or
foreigners, but then Naomi pointed out that the same was true
of most American luxury hotels. Thus endeth the civics lesson.
After perusing and making appropriate fun of the Lost City motif,
we wandered back downhill (on foot) to the crocodile farm. It's
quite cleverly set up; you must go through the gift shop both
on the way in and on the way out. Antone and Callee seem to have
contracted an addiction to shopping. The crocodile farm was, not
surprisingly, full of crocodiles. The big ones (who were very,
very big) didn't move much, but the small ones were quite active.
There were informative signs everywhere on the life and habits
of the crocodile. Apparently, despite its fearsome reputation,
crocodiles haven't killed the most humans of any animal in Africa.
That honor goes to the hippos. Our "cute little ears" theory is
thus vindicated. To meet Ken and Helen back at the Sun City Hotel
(at about the midpoint of the slope), we took the local tram,
which turned out to be the most accessible thing in Africa. The
ramp up to the platform was a very gentle slope, they had a special
gate ready for wheelchairs, the floor of the train was level with
the floor of the platform, and there was little or no gap between
them.
As we left Sun City, we realized that we hadn't, in fact, paid
our admission at the front gate. So even though they ultimately
got as much money from us as if we had, we hadn't followed procedure,
and our entire stay in Sun City was, from a certain point of view,
illegitimate. The obvious implication? This was our second illicit
crocodile viewing. As hardened international criminals, we start
keeping an eye out for the crocodile cops.
A legally taken crocodile picture. Note the vervet monkey (circled
in red) tempting fate.