The Cape Town Eye

Monday morning felt like a scene out of the Twilight Zone. I got to work and found a humongous ferris wheel in the car park. Not one of those miniature jobs you find at coastal town carnivals across the world. I'm talking about a legitimate tourist tanker.

Confusion overthrew the office. How did we all miss it being put together?

Did it grow overnight like Jack's beanstalk - and would it get taller still? Was it constructed in the FIFA super-lab inside Table Mountain?

I turned to the only source of truth left in this crazy world - twitter.

'It's . Google it, doofus' I was told about 41 seconds later by 3 people.

As it turns out, the Mystery Wheel was built by Wheels of Excellence - a Dutch company- and shipped over here from France. Sneaky.

The structure reaches some 60 meters into the open sky and offers a view of the harbour and Table Bay, Table Mountain, Cape Town Stadium and most of the city's congested traffic.

It's been put there specifically to entertain tourists, following the commercial success of the London and Paris Eyes. Word around the water cooler is that tickets are R70 a pop (symbol(pound)5.50), which is a total bargain. Even South Africans can afford to save up and ride it once in a life time (just about everything else has increased in price, as shop keepers gear up to make a fortune off Western tourists).