BY JOHN FITZGERALD
The 105-year-old Mount Nelson, or ``Nellie'' as it's known to Cape Towners is, with the possible exception of La Mamounia in Marrakesh, Africa's finest and one of its most illustrious hotels.
In the most recent of the kudos it has received over the years, The Mount Nelson was included on the 2004 Condé Nast Traveler Gold List of the world's best places to stay.
Located in South Africa's second-largest city, with its striking natural setting of mountains and ocean, and its close proximity to Constantia, Stellenbosch and other famous wine estates on the Cape Peninsula, the hotel is built on the lower slopes of Table Mountain.
Along with the various buildings, the estate has 3.5 hectares of gardens planted with lavender, hollyhocks, iceberg roses and hundreds of other plants and flowers.
There are 57 suites and 144 bedrooms to choose from — the several I saw, including my own, were oozing conservative good taste — as well as tennis courts and two swimming pools. Beaches are less than five kilometres from the hotel and it's only a 20-minute walk to the city centre.
But once you've basted with sun block, it's no easy task to dispense with the trashy read and hoist yourself out of the poolside lounge chairs.
Named after Admiral Lord Nelson, hero of the battle of Trafalgar during the Napoleonic Wars, The Mount Nelson opened in March, 1899. It was a time when the British Empire extended its rule over 30 million square kilometres and roughly a quarter of the world's population.
The hotel's mission was to offer top-quality accommodation to the high-society figures, millionaires, explorers and adventurers arriving in and departing from Cape Town on the distinctive lavender-hulled ships of the British Union-Castle line.
Seven months after the opening came the onset of the Anglo-Boer War that saw British forces invade the Afrikaner republics of the gold-rich Transvaal and the neighbouring Orange Free State. The conflict would last 2 1/2 years.
High-ranking British officers flooded into the hotel, among them Lord Kitchener, whose unappetizing mug would later be used on the famous World War I recruitment poster. A young Winston Churchill was also a guest. Making his début as journalist, he sent back colourful dispatches to his London readers from the front.
During the late 1920s, following the lead of the Prince of Wales (later Edward VIII) who had visited the hotel in 1925, wealthy society figures arrived aboard ships from England, with their Rolls Royces in tow. Many stayed for three or four months at a stretch and some left their cars behind to be cared for until their next stay.
I'd read some of the hotel's history prior to flying into Cape Town as part of a small group, following a safari tour of Botswana's Okavango Delta. (Along with savouring the views from the back of a jeep of the many wild animals we encountered, several of our number sat around campfires in the evenings and attempted, not too strenuously, to stay sober).
The drive from Cape Town International Airport took no more than 30 minutes on excellently maintained highways and we entered The Mount Nelson's grounds through the graceful Prince of Wales Pillars. Painted pink, as are the other hotel buildings, the archway was erected in honour of the prince's visit.
Inside the grounds, an avenue bordered by Canary Island palms leads to the four-storey main hotel and six separate wings with names such as Taunton House, Green Park and Helmsley. With windows that overlook the gardens, the lobby has sofas and wing-backed chairs upholstered in cream and blue fabrics. One morning, I met an English gentleman seated in one of the armchairs who told me he'd been coming to The Mount Nelson every year for decades, always staying at least a month at a time.
"I try to escape the winter back home," he said. "Always have. I guess I'm one of the English swallows."
Much less traditional than the lounge is the hotel's sexy champagne and cocktail bar called Planet.
Putting a contemporary spin on the style once prevalent on Union-Castle liners during the 1950s, it has an under-lit onyx bar and period-style shipping line chairs. Hanging from the ceiling is a large mobile that gives patrons a view of the solar system and positions of the planets.
Nellie's guests over the years have included a diverse group of grandees, statesmen and other luminaries. Prince and Princess Michael of Kent have been guests (the couple will show up anywhere, but never mind), as well as the Dalai Lama, Margaret Thatcher, the late Peter Ustinov, tennis star Steffi Graff and actor Colin Farrell, who recently spent three months at the hotel during a movie shoot.
In 1999, during a state visit to South Africa, the flamboyant Libyan leader, Moammar Gadhafi, as is his custom at home and abroad, stayed in a spacious quilt-lined tent set up in the gardens outside The Mount Nelson's Helmsley wing, rather than sleep indoors.