In a world filled with great resorts, why would anyone ever choose to schlep about 10,000 miles to the other side of the world, all the way to South Africa, simply to vacation? Why, to stay at The Palace of The Lost City at Sun City, in the Republic of Bophuthatswana, of course.
Part resort, part theme park, part botanical refuge and exotic bird sanctuary, the aptly named Palace is opulent, extravagant, gargantuan, and luxurious beyond imagination. Built a year and a half ago at a hang-the-expense cost of $175 million, The Palace is simply like no other hotel on earth.
Driving up to the hotel’s eye-popping entrance, you can’t help but think of Samuel Taylor Coleridge’s 18th-Century poem, “Kubla Khan,” which begins, “In Xanadu did Kubla Khan a stately pleasure-dome decree.” Well, this latter-day Xanadu is The Palace and its 20th Century Kubla Khan is Sun City’s creator and prime mover, 57-year-old Sol Kerzner, the visionary entrepreneur often referred to in the South African media as “The Sun King.”
The Palace is the crowning achievement in Kerzner’s wildly successful career as a hotelier. A legendary national celebrity, he’s a workaholic known throughout the region as a rags-to-riches empire builder, a son of Russian immigrants who also has been called the Donald Trump of South Africa. Actually, he looks far more Joe Pesci than The Donald; even while his life’s work seems closer to resembling that of a Howard Hughes or a Bugsy Siegel.
Back in 1979, with a score of other hotels under his Sun International belt, Kerzner opened the first of his four hotels in South Africa’s Sun City. The long-controversial resort sits tucked away in tiny Bophuthatswana (pronounced bo-poo-tot-SWANN-a), an arid area in the northern part of Southern Africa that was created back then by apartheid’s social engineers as an independent republic.
While gambling was banned inside South Africa, the leaders of the newly created separate republic within the state were only too happy to welcome Kerzner’s dream of creating a baby Las Vegas, as well as his impressive cash flow. Kerzner’s vision of bringing gambling to Bophutswana paid off.
From the day his first Sun City hotel-casino opened, the resort became the southern hemisphere’s answer to Las Vegas and has remained a howling success ever since. Residents of Johannesburg (or Jo-berg as they all call it) needed to travel but 90 minutes by car for the privilege of forking over their well-earned Rands to revel in the liberating joys of black-jack, roulette wheels and one-arm bandits.
Pulling themselves away from the gaming tables, they also could attend Vegas-styled revues, replete with big name entertainers such as Shirley MacLaine, Natalie Cole, Frank Sinatra and Elton John.
Biblical and majestic, with its ubiquitous African-themed fixtures of faux-furred zebra-skin chairs, fiberglass elephant tusks and elaborate jungle murals, The Palace of the Lost City seems positively Cecil B. DeMille-ian; not unlike some idealized Hollywood vision of what an Old Testament palazzo might look like.
While conceiving The Palace, it’s clear Sol Kerzner didn’t want to create just another hotel. This time out, he was shooting for his crowning achievement, a resort of mythical proportions. Thus was born “The Legend Of The Lost City.” The Palace’s so-called “Lost City” is a cleverly concocted, modern-day myth, one in which-eons back-a royal family was said to have ruled over the land until-according to this new legend-a massive earthquake destroyed its civilization.
The Palace, now built over these supposed ruins, is meant to be the ultimate resurrection of so much ancient splendor. It works. But don’t just think Disneyland-ish; think Disney-Outlandish. While The Lost City is meant to be an ingenious stone-by-stone reconstruction of an ancient civilization, the prices are most definitely 20th Century, with its 338 well-appointed rooms and elegant suites starting at $210 and rising unflinchingly to $2,600 a night.
Facile adjectives and glib descriptions easily can be dismissed as so much hyperbole; so portraying the place accurately does not come easy: The Palace is surrounded by 55 lush acres of a well-manicured rain forest whose 1.6 million imported plants are watered by remote control. And in addition to several elegant swimming pools, there is The Valley Of The Waves, an enormous, landlocked sandy beach constantly being washed by machine-made, 5-foot, surfable waves, and its accompanying three-story water slides. The Palace has a championship golf course and 38 live crocodiles inhabit the water hazard just off the 13th tee. There’s also a motorized, concrete volcano that spews non-allergenic smoke during an ersatz earthquake, which erupts like clockwork every quarter of an hour.
OK, so intimate, it’s not. Still, with so much gargantuan grandeur, it’s gratifying to report that where The Palace excels is in its many little touches, it’s impressive and extensive attention to architectural and furnishing details. The Italian rock crystal chandeliers. The marble floors from Italy. The hand-carved timber doors on each of its rooms.
The fresh fruit and jungle flowers replaced in your room daily. The familiar comforts of having CNN, Sky News and a 24-hour movie channel on the TV in your room. You don’t just get a mint chocolate placed on the edge of your down pillow each evening; you receive a white chocolate oval basket brimming with Godiva chocolates.
Attentive touches are not always small. There’s an enormous Dessendorfer grand piano-one of 15 in the world-which sits in the Crystal Court and was originally brought in by Kerzner when-years back-Liberace first played Sun City.
Water looms large at The Palace. It is, in fact, an integral, interactive and ever-present theme. While wandering about the enormous property (a popular, always-surprising activity) you cannot turn a corner without coming upon a gushing waterfall, a graceful cascade, a babbling brook, a tranquil reflecting pool or even (for you water-skiers and windsurfers) a giant man-made lake.
The weather is mostly glorious. They don’t call it Sun City for nothing. Even in mid-summer (our winter) when I stayed there, it was neither muggy nor too hot. I never once turned on the air conditioning in my room, electing instead to welcome the breeze coming in through the open sliding doors and the slow whirl of the tropical electric fan overhead, very Sydney Greenstreet.
Should you care to enjoy the adventure of a true Africanic experience, the hotel’s concierge will gladly hire a ranger to take you on safari, four-wheeling into the neighboring game reserve, where you can track the likes of assorted wildlife.
You also can welcome a spectacular South African dawn, cracking open a bottle of champagne while silently and smoothly floating over the game reserve, above the trees, in a hot-air balloon. The bird’s-eye view of the abundant wildlife just below is splendid. Not unlike the eccentric doctor played by Richard Attenborough in “Jurassic Park.” Sol Kerzner paid 8 million Rand (about 3 million U.S. dollars) to the government of South Africa so he could electronically fence in the 35,000 acre game reserve that abuts The Palace.
Now that the animals can no longer get out, Kerzner was finally allowed to bring lions into his game park. By adding the kings of the jungle to the reserve complex, Kerzner now has the formidable attraction of offering, for the tracking pleasure of his guests, The Big Five: leopard, water buffalo, rhino, elephant and lion.
The Palace has several handsome bars and lounges, plus two elegant restaurants: The Crystal Court, where American chef Gaetano Ascione serves accomplished, up-to-the-minute California-cuisine; and the Villa Del Palazzo, which specializes in regional Italian cooking (the grilled lobster with pesto is impressive). The food is safe as well as delicious. The tap water, purified on the premises, is perfectly drinkable.
There’s no gambling casino in The Palace; no entertainment center with Vegas-style revues; no movie theaters or shopping malls or other honky-tonk distractions. But the 24-hour gaming casinos and extravaganza revues are a five-minute shuttle-bus ride down the hill at the three other hotels that make up the Sun City complex.
As everyone knows, South Africa is going through a difficult and perilous period of transition. However, Sun City, like most tourist areas of South Africa, exists in something of a vacuum-isolated from the violence and bloodshed. As you’d think twice before venturing up into the South Bronx when vacationing in Manhattan, or driving over to South Central if you visited Los Angeles, neither would you need to stop off at any of the volatile trouble stops should you visit South Africa.
As a trip to South Africa is so far away, and can be relatively expensive, a vacation to that far corner of the globe could be best justified if you took up to two weeks to visit the area. That way, after five to seven days at The Palace, you could then take time touring the area’s other glorious attractions; spending several days at MalaMala, widely known as the world’s most exciting game reserve; plus another four or five days down at the Cape of Good Hope in beautiful Capetown, long considered the jewel of the continent, what with its fine food, sublime weather, both the Atlantic and Indian Oceans for your dipping pleasure, and, of course, its surrounding bucolic wine country. (Think San Francisco meets the South of France.)
Lastly, you could round off your African experience by spending several days at Victoria Falls, one of the world’s great natural wonders, in neighboring Zimbabwe.
After building the 29 other hotels in his hugely successful Sun International chain, Sol Kirzner might have opted to retire. Instead, what he seems to have really wanted was to build a world-class resort featuring comfort, beauty and enchantment everywhere. Hence his show-stopping Palace of the Lost City at Sun City, worthy of its own cleverly constructed African mythology; the whole astonishing resort worthy, indeed, of the efforts of a latter-day Kubla Khan building this modern day Xanadu.
PALACE RATES, AIR FARE COSTS
Room rates at The Palace of The Lost City are the same for single or double occupancy: guest room, $210-$270; family room, $240-$300; luxury room, $240-$300; superior deluxe room, $340-$385; superior suite, $485; African, king, royal and desert suites, to $2,600. For reservations, call 011-27-11-780-7800, or fax 011-27-11-465-73111.
South African Airways flies non-stop from New York and Miami to Johannesburg. The cheapest fare from New York or Miami is $1,599; from Chicago, that fare, including connecting flights, is $1,779. Flights at these prices must be booked 15 days in advance and you must stay a minimum of 13 days.
The business class fare from Chicago is $6,248; first class is $8,656.
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The Palace has three rooms on the ground floor with wide doors and no steps; wheelchairs can roll right into showers. Elevators go to all restaurants, which have ramps at all entrances. There are special reserved parking spaces, and transportation is available 24 hours to take handicapped guests down to the Valley of the Waves or the Entertainment Center. Perhaps most important to some guests, all slot machines are wheelchair accessible.
