An eclectic mix of Las Vegas and Disneyland, where slot machines are king of the jungle, will be one of the top tourist spots trying to attract World Cup soccer fans next year.
Sun City, founded as a sinful playground for white South Africans under apartheid, is close to Rustenburg, one of the World Cup venues and home of the platinum-rich Royal Bafokeng Nation, one of Africa's wealthiest tribes.
The 1500-hectare holiday complex houses a fantasy Lost City and a myriad of attractions including two championship golf courses, an artificial beach, a man-made lake for water sports and one of the world's most luxurious hotels.
Despite being derided by critics as a monument to kitsch, Sun City is one of South Africa's biggest tourist attractions, pulling in almost three million visitors a year, 60 percent of them from overseas, and is particularly popular with Asians.
Two hours from Johannesburg, the resort is adjacent to the 550-square-km Pilanesberg Game Park which boasts all the Big Five game animals and may attract a more reflective fan than brash Sun City.
The resort was founded in the heart of the bush as a casino in 1979 by South African tycoon Sol Kerzner to circumvent apartheid anti-gambling laws.
The site was in Bophuthatswana, one of a series of nominally independent "homelands" set up by the white government but not recognized internationally.
Sun City was popular with wealthy whites seeking pleasures forbidden by the puritanical apartheid government, including topless revues and interracial sex as well as gambling.
The original reason for the resort disappeared when gambling was legalized after the end of apartheid in 1994, but Sun City has maintained its popularity thanks to massive investment and diversification.
UNIQUE STYLE
Kitsch or not, the architectural style is undoubtedly unique -- think Mayan meets King Kong -- mixed with relentless African references and an endless collection of statues and paintings of animals, particularly leopards, cheetahs and elephants.
Even the hotel carpets have a jungle motif.
While gambling is still on offer -- there are 600 slot machines, gaming tables in the original casino and a private room for high rollers -- Sun City has successfully transformed itself into a cross between a theme park and a luxury resort.
"Once gaming laws were relaxed, nobody would drive from Johannesburg just to gamble, so we changed. There are very few places that can offer as much as we can here," said Sun City spokeswoman Nokuthula Nkosi.
The biggest attraction now is the Lost City, based on an elaborate and entirely imaginary legend about an ancient African kingdom destroyed by a volcano and rediscovered after thousands of years.
The resort's flagship hotel, the 338-room Palace of the Lost City, which opened in 1992, is one of the world's most extravagant, decorated with imported Italian marble and tiles and surrounded by an artificial jungle nurtured incongruously in the midst of dry bush veldt.
Sun City, much enamored of superlatives, boasts that the jungle, comprising 1.2 million trees and plants, is the largest ever made by man.
Publicity material says the hotel's domed entrance ceiling was painted, with more brightly-colored African scenes, by five artists "in the same way as Michelangelo painted the Sistine Chapel in Rome."
Next door to the hotel is "the world's most advanced water park," the Valley of the Waves, with an artificial surfing breaker and beach, as well as water chutes and flumes with names such as "The Temple of Courage."
ERUPTING VOLCANO
In line with the Lost City legend, a bridge crossing over to the resort's entertainment center shakes -- to the consternation of unprepared tourists -- when a simulated volcano erupts.
Large Nile crocodiles also feature at Sun City, a dozen providing a water hazard on one of the golf courses, and 7000 more are on show in a sanctuary.
After all the excess, the real bush next door might be a bit of a shock to Sun City guests but the calm and majestic scenery may also be a welcome relief from the man-made entertainment.
Pilanesberg, the fourth largest game park in South Africa, is set in the crater of a real extinct volcano. In the center is a beautiful blue lake where water birds can be seen close-up from hides.
Large herds of elephant, hippos, white and black rhinos, lions, leopards, cheetahs and many other animals inhabit the park, which was created in 1979 by moving various species from other areas into a collection of former cattle farms under Operation Genesis, one of the world's biggest translocations of wildlife.
Pilanesberg, with a spectacular landscape of rocky outcrops and woodland, now has a population of more than 7000 beasts, happily oblivious to their concrete imitations next door.
Reuters
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