Wild family safaris in Africa

Jeremy Lazell subjects his whole family to a new family-friendly South African adventure. What could possibly go wrong?

I am enjoying TimesOnLine articles so I have decided to include a few articles about travelling in South Africa.  Here is one I found relevant to me having been on safari with my sisters kids :-)  For the complete article click on the link at the end:

There are many ways I annoy my wife, but booking a luxury family safari a few hours north of Johannesburg has so far been the most extravagant. “It’ll be great,” I say, pointing to a pair of tots beaming from a safari vehicle in the brochure.

“It’ll be horrendous,” she sighs. “Those children are at least seven. Ours are five, three – and hello, what about the baby?”

The good news is the woman from Original Travel, the company arranging our trip, has no truck with words such as “horrendous”. “It’ll be fabulous,” she promises. “The kids can go horse-riding, the baby will have his own nanny. There are heated pools at both lodges. It’s nonmalarial. You won’t want to come back.”

The bad news is Original Travel is launching an Original Kids arm to its holiday empire: maybe it’s just desperate for publicity. I ring around. “Mmm,” ponders the man from Aardvark Safaris, for whom the family safari makes up about 50% of business.

“We usually say six is when they really start to enjoy it.” The man from Audley Travel, another of a growing army of operators targeting families, doesn’t much like the sound of our baby, either. And he’s never even spent a night feeding it Calpol and changing its sheets. What have I done?

“What have you done?” asks my wife on the plane. Our three-year-old has just discovered there is no extra seat for his toasted sandwich, and is wailing like a trapped rabbit. The baby has leaked through his nappy, and is actually dripping onto my wife. I’ve got a horrible feeling it might not be wee. Only the five-year-old is happy, merrily kicking away at the seat-back in front of him, off his head with excitement because the in-flight entertainment carries the promise of two Cartoon Network channels. We have still to take off.

There are three things I learn in the next 11 hours. One: teething babies really produce a lot of diarrhoea. Two: there’s only so long a three-year-old can sleep on your lap before the blood starts congealing in your calves. Three: Africa is really, really big. Hours, days, weeks into our flight to Johannesburg, the steward wakes me to say the five-year-old cannot lie on the floor. For his own safety.

“Never mind, Ruben,” I tell him, “we must be nearly there.” We call up the moving map and watch in silent horror as the little plane jiggles backwards and forwards somewhere above Khartoum. Time to destination: six hours 13 minutes. “Get back on the floor,” I tell him.

At Johannesburg, my sister picks us up from the airport.

“Bloody hell,” she says. “What happened?” We look awful, like survivors of slaughter. But we feel great. The worst part is over. At her house, a go-away bird yowls “Go-away” from the tree by the pool. The boys have water-balloon fights with their cousin, while my wife and I laze around on the grass and wonder at the simple pleasure of being able to unfurl our limbs. “Africa is really happy,” says the three-year-old.

It is a golden two days. All too soon, though, the real test arrives. Safari. A minibus drives us the three hours north to the Waterberg plateau. Promisingly, the kids take the drive in their stride. Top Trumps are played. I-spy is enjoyed. The driver even spots a giraffe. “Look, giraffe!” he shouts. Ruben looks up from his Star Wars Top Trumps, clocks the giraffe, looks back down at his cards and calls: “Jedi Powers, 99.” “Jedi Powers, 37,” says his brother. We drive on.

Our first lodge is called Ant’s Nest. It is magnificent: just three thatched cottages around a shady lawn and pool, with the look and feel of a governor-general’s house circa 1910. If colonial chic existed, Ant’s Nest would be its showroom. It’s so good, even the wife is struggling to stay cross at me now. “Oh my God,” she says. “You’re a genius.”

It is the start of something unexpectedly magical. Where I have pictured a slow-drip Chinese water torture of parental shame – food spat, tantrums tossed, guests affronted – instead, the children are a disconcerting delight. It’s ironic, because 90% of guests at Ant’s Nest have kids, and the mood here is one of chin-chucking indulgence.

What you can’t help falling for at Ant’s Nest are the owners, the eponymous Ant and wife Tessa. Burly (him), beautiful (her), with slow, burnished smiles that warm like an African sun (both), they look and sound like what the wife and I might have been without kids. “Coming for a ride?” Ant says to the boys, and before I can explain that they’ve never ridden before, there they are, up and in the saddle and trotting off towards a herd of giraffe with big cowboy grins stretching beneath their helmets.

Oh God, it’s so banal, I know, out here under an African sky, to gush about the kids’ stuff – favourite meals arriving straight after game drives, Jeeps pitching up to whisk weary riders back to the lodge, inflatable toys scattered about the pool in case the slow-sloping “beach” isn’t kiddy-thrill enough – but it doesn’t half help you find your family-holiday mojo.

In fact, the real trick at Ant’s Nest is that “family holiday” isn’t just a euphemism for “mum-and-dad holiday”. Sure, you can pack your kids off on bug walks and horse rides if you’re Kids’ Club kind of people, but here you can do everything alongside your kids, rather than away from them.

I won’t pretend it makes for the most relaxing of game drives – try soaking up the wonder of an eland herd while your three-year-old roots around in your pocket for Jelly Tots – but blimey, it’s magical. Toasting marshmallows over an open braai, tracking a family of rhinos on foot – it’s the stuff of memories.

OUR SECOND hotel, Jaci’s Safari Lodge , is also the stuff of memories. Not all of them good. It has been a 4½ hour drive west to the Madikwe Reserve, the last hour along a dirt road whose bumpy contours become etched like a sonograph line across our brains.

“Your game drive leaves at 4.30,” says the manager. “Tea is at four o’clock.” I look at my watch: 4.17pm. “How long is the game drive?” I ask. “Three and a half hours,” he says. I look at the kids: the five-year-old has his head on the table; the baby starts to cry. I know exactly how he feels.

In the end, we do go for the game drive. In for a penny. And it’s great. They have the Big Five here in Madikwe Reserve – lion, leopard, rhino, elephant, buffalo – and where Ant’s Nest can occasionally test your passion for kudus, zebras and wildebeest, at Jaci’s we are following a pride of lions stalking impalas. “Who do you want to win?” asks the five-year-old, suddenly uncertain.

The lions do, and it’s incredible. Impalas are doing cartwheels over lunging jaws, hooves are thundering past the Jeep. And as if the censors have arranged the moment themselves, the kill itself happens discreetly off set, away behind a bush, close enough that we can actually feel the growling and ripping on our eardrums, but not so in-your-tiny-face that the five-year-old has to witness eyeballs rolling, hooves twitching, jugulars pumping. That said, he’d probably love a jugular pumping. “Did you see their bloody faces?” he keeps saying to anyone who’ll listen, wild-eyed, aflame.

So, the wildlife at Jaci’s Safari Lodge is fantastic. We see elephants, buffaloes, lions chasing giraffes, and more birds than a three-year-old can shake a £400 digital camera at while shouting: “My turn, get off!” Likewise, our guide, Nico, is a great big, wide-smiled, overgrown toddler of a man, endlessly amused by our boys, for ever ready with a Lion King reference to help explain a point. We love him, as we love Naomi, who sits in the dark watching the boys at night while the wife and I eat kudu pot roast beneath the stars.

But. Is it the rooms (glorified tents, surrounded by a slightly oppressive, encroaching scrub), is it the size (there are eight thatch-covered tents, but it feels like a larger, slicker operation)? Somehow, we never quite fall for the lodge itself. At Ant’s Nest, someone has written “Doesn’t get better for a family break” in the guestbook. At Jaci’s Safari Lodge, the only guestbook reference to kids is this: “Wonderful experience, shame about the riotous children in the restaurant.”

Is it worth it, then? Well, it’ll seriously help if your sister lives in Johannesburg (or failing that, if you can factor in an extra night around Jo’burg to recover from the flight). I pretty much dribbled my way through the first 24 hours, which isn’t ideal if you’re paying £500 or so per day for the privilege. Because safari doesn’t come cheap: five nights with flights will cost you more than £5,000 with a couple of kids. Throw in a baby and you’re getting closer to £6,000. You could live for eight weeks at Center Parcs for less.

My God, it’s good, though. Will they remember any of it a year from now? Who knows, but driving back from the lion-kill that evening, the boys opening and closing their mouths to make flute sounds on the warm dusk wind, the wife clutching my hand beneath the blanket, I know I will.

— Jeremy Lazell travelled as a guest of Original Travel (   020 7978 7333    , www.originaltravel.co.uk), which has five nights, full-board, at Jaci’s Safari Lodge and Ant’s Nest from £5,400, based on a family of four, with children under 11; under2s cost an extra £430. The price includes flights from Heathrow to Johannesburg with British Airways, all transfers, activities, permits and baby-sitting. One night at the InterContinental Airport Sun hotel in Johannesburg adds £380, B&B

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