fantastic world travel: South Africa

Showing posts with label South Africa. Show all posts

Sun City, South Africa

Situated in the most affluent area of all South Africa, Sun City is a fantastic place to go for a long weekend break or full vacation, Sun City is a purpose built casino resort, offering the very best in the world of gambling and live entertainment. Located in the heart of the North West Province of South Africa, it is a short drive of a couple of hours from Johannesburg, the worlds largest city which is not on a coastline, lake or river, and its international airport. Pretoria is also within comfortable travelling distance.

Sun City was originally built during the apartheid years in the early nineteen seventies and opened in 1979. At that time (borders have since changed) it was outside of the South African formal area of control, and during that period gambling and topless dancing were not allowed within South Africa. So it quickly became a popular place to visit, and has remained so ever since.

Sun City offers a good choice of quality hotels, and the resort also provides regular transfer transport to and from Jo’burg airport. There are four hotels, each offering its own style and ambience. They are the Palace of the Lost City hotel, Cascades hotel, the Cabanas hotel, and (not surprisingly) the Sun City hotel. They range from the sheer luxury and opulence of the Palace of the Lost City to the laid-back family style of the Cabanas. Something to suit everyone’s taste and budget.

In addition to its inbuilt attractions, Sun City is also on the doorstep of one of South Africa’s best known National Parks, the Pilanesberg Game Reserve.

The place is also very attractive to golfers, as it boasts not one, but two international standard golf courses. Both were designed by Gary Player, one of which (the Gary Player Country Club) hosts the annual ‘Million Dollar’ golf challenge which attracts many of the world’s top players.

Although a long way from the ocean, Sun City offers a beach to relax on and top up your tan, along with a myriad of water sports and activities. Package holiday deals are available which also take in some of South Africa’s other tourist destinations such as Victoria Falls, Capetown, and stunning Swaziland.

There is also a six thousand seater auditorium called the Sun City Super Bowl, at which world famous acts perform. Over the years since the resort was first built, the Super Bowl has played host to concerts from music legends such as Elton John, Queen, ray Charles, Tina Turner, Rod Stewart, and Dionne Warwick, along with many more contemporary bands and solo artists.

The resort offers a very wide range of activities for holiday-makers, including ballooning, flying in a Tiger Moth bi-plane, archery, clay shooting, elephant rides, adventure quad biking, and of course the water sports. Of special interest to many are the malaria free safaris to the superb Pilanseberg Game Reserve.

Sun City is also a significant venue for conferences, and many claim it to be the very best conference centre in the whole of South Africa. And then of course, there are the casinos …

Wow! This is quite a place.

South Africa -- Jewish Museum

This is a little far afield, but here's a link to an article by Dan Fellner about Jewish heritage sites in Cape Town, South Africa -- where, apparently, 80 percent of the Jewish population has roots in Lithuania....

Most of the important Jewish sites, including the South African Jewish Museum, the Gardens Shul, Cape Town Holocaust Center and Gitlin Library, are located in the same complex on an outdoor square in the heart of downtown Cape Town, just four blocks from the South African Parliament.

A focus was the Jewish Museum, which, the article says, attracts 15,000 visitors a year and features a "reconstructed shtetl from Riteve, Lithuania in the 1880s" with "a scale model of a school, shop and modest house. Inside the home, the table is set for Shabbat dinner."

The entrance to the museum is through the exterior of the first synagogue built in South Africa, which was consecrated in 1863. Inside are the original wooden ark and mosaic floor and other artifacts from the synagogue. [...] every window in the museum has a view of Table Mountain, which is what the Jewish immigrants first saw when arriving in Cape Town by ship.

The museum depicts what life was like for those immigrants and does so with high-tech and interactive exhibits, including a bank of touch-screen computers where visitors can research their family roots.

[...]

The museum also showcases the role played by Jews in the struggle against apartheid, including Isie Maisels, who was Nelson Mandela's defense lawyer during the 1963 trial that led to Mandela's incarceration for treason, and Helen Suzman, who for many years was the sole anti-apartheid voice in the South African Parliament.

Read Full Article

You can also read the article and see pictures on Dan Fellner's web site. Click HERE.

And How Is The Weather In South Africa?

One of my friends in internet lives in South Africa. Now when I complain about the rains and cold, she tells me about her flowers and the garden. They have Christmas feasts with +40°C . It is not very good maybe. Christmas feast is born to make winter more happy. What have they in the middle of the winter, in july and august? No one great fabulous feast! Oh poor creatures!

Here are photos made there.