“God created Africa for parents and grandparents to explore and enjoy with their children and grandchildren. For others without children, he created noise cancelling headphones.” ~ Trevor Fernandes
Wildlife Safari has custom designed luxury family safaris for over forty five years and I believe the secret of our success is matching the family with the right locations, accommodations, guides and activities. A “one style fits all” safari could easily become a recipe for disaster, so with the benefit of many years of planning and operating family safaris, here are a few key guidelines for families planning to travel to Africa.
Custom design the journey to suit the family dynamics
Wildlife Safari custom designs every family safari to suit the dynamics of each particular family.
As with all our family safaris, we always insist the family travel in their own safari vehicle/s with a private guide for the entire safari. In East Africa, our custom built Toyota 4WD safari vehicles can be configured to carry four or six passengers and each vehicle comes with a senior Wildlife Safari guide, with at least fifteen years of experience with the company. Also, each vehicle is fitted with an electric esky, power points to charge cameras and complimentary Wi-Fi a necessary evil for kids, and many adults, today.
The first step is to ascertain the family preference of airline to fly and the flight route. The arrival and departure times at the destination are vitally important to help plan land arrangements. There are numerous airlines to choose from and offer a stopover possibility on the way home. Airfares and frequent flyer program memberships may also factor into the selection of the airline.
Next, select your region (Eastern Africa or Southern Africa or both), country and locations to be visited. Wildlife Safari has designed a simple menu of the Best 50 Spots in Africa all of which would be very family friendly (subject to ages) but even a short list of fifty may be too much choice. So if I were to narrow down the choice to the best countries I would select Kenya for the volume of wildlife, very family friendly camps and the total flexibility Wildlife Safari provides on the ground so the safari is designed around the family’s convenience not the other way around. This happens because Wildlife Safari is the operator on the ground.
South Africa is my other country selection because it has a huge selection of different family experiences including wildlife activities structured differently to Kenya, with perhaps not the same level of flexibility but certainly a level of luxury found only in a few other countries. And while Kenya is predominantly a wildlife destination, South Africa has a gamut of other experiences, history, culture, cuisine, wines, and more. I like to describe it as third world exotic with first world infrastructure.
