For me, the best family holidays are family safari holidays! I take my own family every year on safari back to Africa where I spent most of my life and it entirely enthrals them! There is always simply so much to do and so many new, exciting adventures to try!

Whether you are an urban family who are happiest in the city, and enjoy only the very best of luxury, or a family from the country who are down to earth and enjoy outdoor pursuits including camping and perhaps horse riding and fishing – it offers the best of both worlds!

We have specially selected lodges and camps (and private mobile tented camps erected purely for your family with your own private guide and vehicle) that we have chosen because they particularly suit a family environment. Crucial to this is to have a guide who engages your children at every level – because without this, your safari might be a failure! Teaching your children how to read the night sky of the southern hemisphere, with its stars and planets, to learning about the medicinal properties of trees and plants, to fishing, learning how to canoe, how to quad bike, what behavioural signs to watch for in mammals – and then best of all, learning about another culture. What it takes to become a warrior, how these different tribes live – this is far beyond a holiday – this is an education of an extraordinary kind!

You can then end it off somewhere either on a private boat, visiting islands, or at a private villa which comes complete with skipper and boat, or stay at a lovely resort or chic Robinson Crusoe retreat that caters for every adrenaline charged teenager or a self contained toddler!

Either way, with a team of specialists from Africa who specialise in family safaris, having created countless holidays of a lifetime over the last 25 years, we are perfectly placed to help you!

I admit – I am entirely biased! For me there is no family holiday like family safari holidays! They simply offer so much and I take my own family on safari each year, several times a year. When I look for something else to do with them, we obviously have great fun, but we keep coming back to what I know and love best – Africa!

The thing is – it offers that old fashioned childhood that we all hanker after – no I.T. – no gadgets – just plain simply fun and conversation! Such as sleeping out in tents at night, beneath the stars! Learning to light a fire with no matches – the traditional way. Learning how to make a bow and arrow and how to shoot it. Learning to fish, to canoe, and most importantly – learning about everything around us. Whether that is survival – about the animals tracks in the grounds, the medicinal properties of trees and plants and how we might use them, the night sky with the myriad of stars and planets – it is these plus much, much more. Then perhaps you might like to go on a camel and camp out or on a horse riding safari – or canoeing, walking, game driving (obviously!), but the opportunities are endless. Then end up either in a city such as Cape Town, or at Victoria Falls or at a beach – where you can either flop or be as active as you wish – staying at a chic Robinson Crusoe retreat or a boutique hotel or whatever ticks that box! However, if you are taking your family, talk to me first – as with over 24 years of arranging the most fun and wonderful bespoke safaris for our clients who are travelling with children, and coming from Africa and taking my own children there every year – there is nobody else best placed to advise you!

Africa, by its sheer size and the convoluted nature of the countries that make up this fascinating continent, can be slightly daunting when one is thinking of planning a safari or a vacation. Of course one wants to see as much as possible on what may be the “trip of a lifetime” but balancing activities and locations with the logistics of travelling around and making sure that the lodges, camps or hotels in which one might stay are “just right” can be a real task and a huge responsibility without essential first-hand knowledge of the destination.

 

That’s where a long-established specialist like African Explorations comes to the fore. With over 20 years of trading as a specialist tour operator based in the UK, dealing with clients worldwide, we are experts in Africa custom vacations. Put simply: we know what we are doing. Our small team of dedicated, highly knowledgeable, professionals have all lived, worked in or otherwise have vast in-depth knowledge of the countries in which they create safaris and holidays for their clients. It is this knowledge, constantly updated, that is the anvil on which we forge your loose ideas into a gorgeous-but-workable end product that offers the correct balance of value and experience to ensure a superb vacation, whether it be a couple, a family, a single traveller or a specialist group. And there’s no downside for our clients because it costs no more to use us than it would if one was able to create the same trip oneself!

 

An Africa custom vacation can engage with almost any client interest, be it wildlife, culture, a specialist activity or maybe some other reason for travelling to these fabulous destinations. We are proud to create vacations that are completely tailored to our client’s requirements, down to the last small detail to the extent that it is almost unknown for us to send two different clients on exactly the same vacation. This may seem surprising but every individual on this planet is different; ergo each safari – if truly personalised – will be unique and cater for differing desires and personalities!

 

Africa custom vacations are, simply, our life. Our only requirement is that the vacation we create is exactly right for you, our client!

How often do you hear the words: “not like it used to be”? More to the point, what emotions and memories does that sort of phrase invoke? For, in our modern world, life races by at speed and the basics are forgotten . The children’s day is full of school, after school clubs, extra lessons, swimming, Stagecoach, music, riding or whatever their interests (or their parent’s interests!) may be.  The parents, too, are equally busy rushing around earning  a living or seeing friends. This may or may not be such a bad thing but there’s a question – how much time do we really get to spend together, properly, as a family unit and together experiencing the world in which we actually live? And how often do we get to do – and appreciate – real things in a world where the DS, TV, IPOD, PC and the good old phone are constantly-pervasive influences and distractions?

I allude to “connection”, not only with one’s family (although that has to be the ultimate point) but the actual world which spins beneath our feet. Not a world where everything is seen through a glazed window, on a screen or bought from a supermarket but a world where things are real – where the land, animals, culture and life all there to be lived, enjoyed and, crucially, experienced together at first hand and without barriers.  This is the joy of a Child Friendly African Safari – it brings families together in one, huge, ongoing and never-to-be-forgotten, life-enhancing adventure.

Connection comes from simple things: The sigh of the wind through a whistling thorn bush; the roar of a lion; the stellar clarity of a Serengeti night; the smile of a child seeing his or her first giraffe; the complete assurance of a nomadic tribesman alone on vast plains; a game of cards in camp; messing about in a mudhole where no-one cares about being covered in mud; the smell of breakfast cooked over an open fire after an early morning walk; the determination of a dung beetle; a genuine grin of welcome; the midnight rustle of “something” moving through the bush just a few metres from your bed…….the list is endless but the theme is the same: simplicity, raw connection to the world around you and of which you are now truly a part.

Children naturally understand all this, of course. Preparation for adulthood erases much of the basic instict with which we are born but, if one takes children to Africa and allows them to free their sense of adventure and fun, and, at the same time, allows adults to reconnect with simple enjoyment and the instincts that live on in all of us what a holiday that becomes! What an experience! What a homecoming! What enormous fun! And how fabulously bonding the whole experience can be.

A child friendly safari in Africa can achieve all this. However (or in whatever country) one might “do” Africa – and the possibilities are almost endless so long as one leaves electronics and preconceptions behind – the people you meet will be welcoming and fun, the places you see and stay will be awe inspiring and the experience will be real. This is magic for children and adults alike and is,  surely, not only how things should be – even if just for a short while – but also, perhaps, just a little, “like it used to be”…….

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The ‘Big Five’ and the other lesser known – but just as important! – ‘Little Five’ are words synonymous with a safari to Africa. The Big Five are Buffalo, Lion, Elephant, Leopard and Rhino and can be found together in many national parks, game reserves and privately owned conservancies in Southern and Eastern Africa. In South Africa the best known park is, of course, the Kruger National Park. Nearly two million hectares in extent, the Kruger was gazetted in 1898 to protect the South African lowveld wildlife. A plethora of environmental techniques and policies makes the region an ongoing conservation success. There are also privately owned reserves contiguous with the Kruger which feature beautiful and often luxurious safari lodges and camps. Such areas include the well known Sabi Sands where seeing a huge variety of animals is almost guaranteed on an African Big Five Safari.

Many of these properties accommodate children and offer specialist children’s programs, so an African Big Five Safari is not just for adults! Children’s guides keep children happy and enthralled, including trying to find the ‘Little Five’: buffalo weaver, elephant shrew, leopard tortoise, ant lion and rhino beetle as well as tracking and identifying animals, birds, and insects. Children are kept occupied for hours with short bush walks and spotting “creepy crawlies”, whilst other staff might teach them how to bake animal-themed cookies in the camp’s bush oven (for everyone’s afternoon tea!) whilst adults are busy on a game drive.

For those who like ‘lists’, how about the ‘Birding Six’? These include Ground Hornbill, Kori Bustard, Lappet-faced Vulture, Martial Eagle, Pel’s fishing Owl and Saddle-bill Stork. And then there are the “Little Six Antelope”: Grey Duiker, Sharpe’s Grysbok, Steenbok, Klipspringer, Livingstone Suni and Oribi.

 

An African Big Five Safari is, surely, only possible on land? Not so! For those with a love of the sea and who visit South Africa’s gorgeous coastline there is also the ‘Marine Big Five’ which includes the Southern Right Whale, Cape Fur Seal, common Dolphin, Great White Shark and African Penguin. The best time for whale watching in South Africa is between July and November; several places on the Garden Route feature marine activities although the Walker Bay/Hermanus region is especially well known for easy access to marine wildlife with excellent guiding.

What is a Luxury African Safari? It is many different things to many people! Perhaps this clip defines it in more detail!