Welcome to Cape Town … but first, let us show you Uranus!

It is really the first time in a while that we’re going to see a total return to the holidays and a bumper tourism season after our borders were closed. You’d think the industry would be buzzing. What the Abarders found on our family vacation was a snooze button, writes Gasant Abarder.

Abarder, who recently launched his book, Hack with a Grenade, is among the country’s most influential media voices. Catch his weekly column here, exclusive to Cape {town} Etc.

Awful service and apologies are not quaint or cute, fellow South Africans. We’re not British!

The first experience of Cape Town – so regularly featured on this great website among the top 10 of the world’s best – is a parking basement!

The Airports Company South Africa (ACSA) folks thought it was a good idea to lose the pick-up part of the drop ‘n go. The pick-up now happens in the basement. It is so random, cold and basic that you’ll be forgiven for thinking you’d just landed on Uranus.

This arrival was the conclusion to a journey best described as tedious. On the other side of the flight, at Lanseria Airport (I refuse to call it an international airport!), the ACSA person confiscated my 10-year-old daughter’s Nerf toy she bought with her birthday money.

My daughter was beside herself and burst into tears – not because the toy was taken but by the glee the ACSA person expressed while confiscating it. The officer then moved to harass a lady who had a bottle opener gift in her carry-on bag.

Look, we know rules are rules. But anyone with kids will tell you that a Nerf toy – which shoots little foam darts – can hardly be mistaken for a toy gun. If you’re a dimwit, you could argue that anyone trying to be a menace with a Nerf toy will only succeed if the victims laughed themselves into submission.

The Lanseria Airport incident was preceded by the return leg of an EZ Shuttle that was 20 minutes late even though we had a flight to catch. It didn’t help they were 20 minutes late collecting us for our pick-up five days prior. Guys, you’re taking the easy part of your name too literally. People are going to miss their flights and you’re not exactly cheap!

The airport experiences book-ended a holiday at Sol’s place in the Sun where we found a city of much eye-rolling, sighing and can’t do attitudes. I mean, the late Sol wouldn’t have been impressed with what the Abarders experienced at Sun City’s Vacation Club and the resort last week.

It was only our second stay after we bought into the timeshare scheme. For a kid from the 80s, it is a dream come true to stay there for a week at a time. For the second time in my life, I had Queen’s “We Will Rock You”, which Sol borrowed in the 80s to market the place, as an earworm while on our way there.

In reality, what we found was rather a “We Will Underwhelm You”.

The reception desk was unresponsive to requests despite promising to call us back, there were never towels available at the pool, the Valley of Waves ran out of tubes for the rides and on one occasion the shuttle service appeared to have forgotten to pick us up and arrived about 40 minutes late.

We have three years left of the timeshare and I’m already anxious for next year.

Look, I get that we’re all tired. It’s been a long decade and we’re only two years in!

When I travel, I use my local McDonald’s store as a yardstick for what the service is like. McCyril is meant to be the deliverer-of-services-in-charge in South Africa.

My closest McDonald’s is Kenilworth. Meh, let’s not talk about the food. The service is horrible.

Service delivery in South Africa is horrible too.

Stay with me.

McCyril, who threatened to resign as president last week for allegedly being naughty with dollars and a mattress, used to be McDonald’s burger-flipper-in-chief.

See where I’m going with this?

It’s obvious: we need to get McDonald’s back on track, make the sun shine again in Sol’s City and deport McCyril to Uranus. It’s going to be a bumper tourism season and we need to end it with our reputation intact if we’re going to sustain it.

Also read:

The stealing of a suburb: More Gym and less Pie in Woodstock’s Gympie Street

Picture: Pexels

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