thekruger’s blog

I’ve just spent three days on a Botswana Safari holiday, staying at Stanleys Camp for two nights and at Chiefs Camp for the third night. It felt as if I had been away for a month! I experienced so many amazing and awesome moments, the most special of which was the interaction with the elephants at Stanleys Camp -  Jabu, Tembe and Morula.

We met the elephants on our second day in Botswana. After a delicious breakfast we were transferred to the trio of elephants where we also met Doug Groves who, together with his wife, Sandi, has cared for these elephants since 1988. He first set down some rules before we were introduced to Jabu, a proud and handsome bull who enjoys his role as the Alpha male of the small herd. We were then invited one by one to stand with Jabu and were allowed to touch him, to feel the difference in the skin of his legs, armpits and trunk, whilst Doug was chatting to us about elephants. Standing underneath the head of an elephant while touching his trunk and leg is indeed very special. Different emotions rush through you – you’re scared and wonder how you can even dream of standing underneath such a huge animal;  yet you are also awestruck by the trust and tranquility you feel around him.  Jabu short for Jabulani, a common Zulu name, means Happiness and indeed Jabu's zest for life is inspiring.  He is kind, playful, generous, big-hearted and dependable. Of the three elephants he is the most independent and confident. After the introduction to Jabu, we then met Tembe and Morula. The end of the tail of an elephant feels like fencing wire!  Thembi, short for Thembigela, is a common Zulu name meaning Trust. Thembi is the sweetheart of the herd and the smallest in stature. Smart and very social, she loves to be the centre of attention.  Morula weaves a powerful magic of her own as in her quiet and subtle way she captures your heart with her sincere, loyal and sweet nature.

After ample time for having your photograph taken with the elephants, you then accompany the herd on their foraging trek. You are invited by Doug to walk in front of the elephants. Morula placed her trunk on my shoulder and gently steered me in the direction she wanted to go. I cannot begin to explain how small, but at the same time how special, I felt. Imagine leading a trio of elephants through the bush! All guests are given the opportunity to experience this. The walk, through the stunning scenery of the Okavango Delta with its huge trees and grass plains, lasts approximately one hour.

Lunch is then served under the shade of  huge Sausage trees with the elephants in close proximity.  You are given a final opportunity after lunch for a photo with Jabu when he stands next to you at the table. His trunk actually pushes against the table! Doug then gets Jabu and Morula to demonstrate the various sounds that they make before Morula gives each guest a goodbye kiss. You are then officially a member of the “Living with Elephants” foundation.

Doug and Sandi strive to give Jabu, Thembi and Morula a life that is as close to elephants' natural lives as possible, yet one that is cushioned from the enormous pressures, insecurities and challenges with which wild elephants are confronted. The Groves vowed from the beginning never to compromise the quality of life and security their elephants need. They are proud that their trio live a life so near to that of wild elephants that they even share grazing grounds. Currently, Grey Matters, Doug and Sandi's Botswana-based company, supports the elephant Trio through educational-based eco-tourism. Through Grey Matters international visitors have the opportunity, through Jabu, Thembi and Morula, to foster a kinship with the African elephant.

As a mother of three young children I’m all for introducing children to the wonder of African wildlife: the bush is a natural arena for learning about the cycles of the earth, the predator hierarchy and the fascinating ways animals adapt to their environment. However before sallying forth a family safari, some reflection on the health issues and on your own children’s temperaments is advisable…

Malaria is a concern in most, but not all, safari areas of Southern Africa. We recommend that small children under the age of five, (as well as pregnant women), do not go to malarial areas as the difficulty of treating malaria increases when small children are concerned. Older children simply take the same precautions as adults. There are non-malarial safari areas that also offer excellent game-viewing: the three main areas being the Eastern Cape, the Madikwe Game Reserve and the Waterberg. 

Moving on to your child’s enjoyment - thinking about an issue from the child’s point of view is never more appropriate than in the bush. Imagine - you are five years old and 1½ hours into a game drive. It was really fun at first and you loved seeing the elephant and the baby zebra but now the ranger at the front just keeps on talking and you haven’t a clue what he’s saying. You’re hungry, and you’re getting cold and ….you really, really need to go to the loo but Mum says you can’t because we’re looking for a pride of lions which were sighted near here … wherever here is. You’re bored and you want to go home now! It doesn’t make for a happy family holiday, especially when you’ve paid a fair bit of money for your safari.

The other aspect to consider is that a safari is, for a few days, a fairly specific way of life. Some kids will easily adapt into the routine of morning and late afternoon activity interspersed with quiet time, ideal for reading or sleeping. However more boisterous kids may find this more difficult especially in the winter months where enjoying time at the pool may not be such an obvious option.

So what should you do? The following is my personal reflections having travelled with my children to a number of game lodges. Your family may be different.

Lets look at each age group in turn …

Babies on Safari

This is relatively straightforward. All game lodges that accept children are well-equipped to look after babies and toddlers. A baby-sitter is booked (preferably ahead of time) and she comes to your chalet or room approximately 30 minutes prior to the start of the game drive. This allows you to settle your baby or toddler with her before setting off. However please note that you should aim to bring all food and milk requirements with you to the lodge, (a wide selection is available from supermarkets in South Africa), as game lodges will generally not hold any stocks.

Baby-sitting:

The baby-sitter is usually a lady from the staff complement. She may have had some first aid training, and she will probably be a designated sitter and used to looking after different children, but she won’t be a trained nanny, and as importantly she will not necessarily be able to read stories, play games or generally occupy or amuse your children. Again this won’t be such an issue for a baby or a toddler but is important to remember if you have a four year old and you are staying at a lodge which doesn’t offer a kiddie drive for younger children..

Accommodation

Usually families ask for either family rooms or family suites (two connected bedrooms either with their own bathrooms or sharing one bathroom.) It’s important to remember that the latter are less commonly found in safari lodges. Many chalets or tents only take one extra bed so parents may need to separate if their children are too young to sleep by themselves. (Remember children will be more scared in a safari environment than in a normal hotel room). Other chalets can take two children (either on two extra beds or one sleeper couch) but never three children.

Safari lodges with two bedroom or three bedroom chalets/houses:

Ulusaba Rock Lodge, Sabi Sands Game Reserve, Kruger

Uplands or Melton Mowbray Manor, Kwandwe Game Reserve, Eastern Cape

Morukuru Game Lodge, Madikwe Game Reserve

Nare Suite, Jaci’s Safari Lodge, Madikwe Game Reserve

Long Hope House, River Bend Game Lodge, Addo National Park, Eastern Cape

Children of seven and upwards

Once your children are about seven years or more, the safari questions become easier. If a lodge takes children in the first place then they’re allowed to go on the ‘adult’ game drives once they are six years and older (seven or eight years for some lodges). All lodges try to put families together on a game drive, which could give you more flexibility, but there is no guarantee of this, nor can you guarantee that the other family has the same expectations or requirements as yours. So if you choose a safari lodge on the basis of its game-viewing rather than its kid’s programme, your children need to be comfortable spending 3 hours on a game drive.

Private Landrover

Some lodges allow us to book a private landrover just for your family. There is an extra supplement for this which is sometimes based on the number of spare seats left in the landrover. (So if you have a large family or you are bringing grandparents or friends along, this may not even cost much more).

Game lodges which offer excellent game-viewing and a flexible approach to children include the following:

Vuyatela, Sabi Sands, Mpumalanga

Ulusaba, Sabi Sands, Mpumalanga

Mala Mala, Sabi Sands, Mpumalanga

Lukimbi, Kruger National Park, Mpumalanga

Jaci’s Tree and Safari Lodges, Madikwe

Uplands, Kwandwe Game Reserve, Eastern Cape

Chobe Chilwero, Chobe, Botswana

Kwando Lagoon, Lebala, Linyanti Swamps, Botswana

Kwando Kwara Camp, Okavango Delta, Botswana

The tricky age …

However which lodge to choose requires slightly more thought when your children are between 2½ and 5 years old. The policy of most game lodges is not to allow children under six years on a game drive as:

·        Their attention span tends to be shorter than the typical three hour game drive

·        They may not be able to stay quiet, or sit still, at critical moments thus endangering the vehicle

·        They may not be able to follow the ranger’s instructions so easily

Thus there is a tricky age when the child thinks that they’d enjoy a game drive, and their parents would dearly like to include them, and yet most lodges don’t allow it.

What are the alternatives?

A number of lodges have taken a child-friendly approach. This varies slightly from lodge to lodge.

·        Some offer a ‘jungle drive’ or special game drive for children. This usually takes place after breakfast and is shorter and more focused on teaching the kids about the Bush than in getting very close to large predators. However there are some points to note. The children will still need to have a babysitter when the adults take their drive so that you could find that you don’t spend much time together as a family. Another point is that these lodges usually then raise the age limit for the ‘adult’ game drive to eight years or more as they are providing a child-friendly alternative. However if you have a sensible, animal-crazy seven year old, she might find the kid’s drive too ‘young’ for her whereas her four year old brother loves it!

Lodges which offer ‘jungles drives’:

Jacis Tree Lodge, Madikwe

Mark’s Camp, Lalibela, Eastern Cape

Honeyguide Khoka Moya, Manyeleti, Kruger

Tuningi Safari Lodge, Madikwe

·        Alternatively your children all go to a central place where they can be entertained both inside and outside. A children’s ranger is on hand to take them out to look at the veld, perhaps even enjoy a short game drive. Or if they don’t want that, they can watch an animal video or join in an animal quiz.

Lodges offering this:

Kwando Safaris in Botswana

Ngala Main Camp, Timbavati, Mpumalanga,

Phinda Mountain Lodge, Maputaland, KwaZulu Natal

·        The final possibility is to head to a more ‘accessible’ game reserve. These are lodges that generally don’t have so many (or any) large predators and where the game drives tend to be shorter (2 hours). The age limit on the drives can be as low as three years and there are many more children around so that if your four year old is a little boisterous, you aren’t left cringing with embarrassment. Kids usually love these lodges and the lack of predators mean that walks, mountain biking, canoeing and so forth are sometimes on the menu. Perhaps combining some time at one of these lodges with a night or two at one of the Big Five private game reserves will mean that parents and children are all satisfied.

Lodges offering this:

Buffalo Hills, Garden Route

Kariega, Eastern Cape

River Bend, Eastern Cape

1) Kariega is quite unusual in that it has two parts to its reserve, the orginal reserve which doesn’t have predators and therefore is open to all ages and the newer Big Five reserve.

Conclusion

Each family is different and the above is an overview of some of the considerations when choosing a game lodge for your family which include your attitude to malarial areas, the exact ages and temperaments of your children. Some families want to stay together and enjoy game drives altogether. If they have very young children, this may mean some compromise on the choice of game lodge or budgeting for the extra expense of having your own game vehicle. Other families would love the idea of the children having their own kid’s drive where they can meet other children and learn about the bush in terms that they appreciate. Contact us to discuss your own family’s preferences.

Many adrenaline junkies I know say that Kruger Park safaris are boring and dreary.

Rubbish.

I normally point them in the direction of this little video clip I found on YouTube.

There we have a little car, minding it's business, before coming across a pretty peeved off elephant, just managing to escape getting crushed by our trunked friend.

Boring and dreary?

I think not!

On our way to Mpumalanga for a well deserved break, Bronwyn, Ryno and I decided that we were going on a road trip. We wanted to experience a Kruger Park safari. We were headed from Cape Town to the Kruger National Park where we were going to stay for three nights at the Phumulani lodge. Now some might say that we were absolutely crazy, but that’s what we’ve always done: unplanned road trips and outings that never go according to plan, but somehow always worked out and worth every minute.

Getting there

The drive from Johannesburg to the Kruger National Park was not only chaotic but a true test of our friendship. We got completely lost in Johannesburg city centre, and believe me, it’s not the place you want to get lost in. Taxis and pedestrians everywhere are there to confuse the situation even more, because somehow, the three of us managed to take the wrong turn-off and instead of driving away from Johannesburg, ended smack in the middle of it.

So eventually, after much debate, we found the right turn off that took us all the way through to Mpumalanga and to the Kruger National Park.

Checking in

We eventually arrived at the Phumulani lodge and we weren’t a pretty sight. To say it was hot in the Kruger National Park is an understatement; it was more like walking into an open-air sauna. Now although it’s nothing unusual, this weather was the exception. We struck it lucky, or rather unlucky, because most of South Africa was hit by a heat wave that was lasting way too long. Hot and irritated from the drive, we decided that we needed some refreshing. We decided to go for a swim and soon enough the air of irritation was gone and in its place, an atmosphere of adventure.

This was going to be three days of spending some time in Africa’s wilderness, but more importantly catching up with old friends. Bronwyn has been living in the UK for the last three years now, and since then we’ve decided make a pact that whenever the three of us are together we would spend it going on our usual road trip or simply just going away together for a few days.

After we cooled down from the swim, we headed to the Lodge for lunch, followed by a quick power nap and then just enough time to get ready for our first game drive. Although there was a game drive just after lunch, Ryno refused to sit in an open 4x4 in the midst of the hot weather, so we opted for the drive at dusk.  I didn’t blame him, because although I couldn’t wait to go into the bushveld for some game-viewing, dusk has always been my favourite time of day and the weather was taking some time getting used to.

A bumpy ride …

As we got on the back of the 4x4 Bronwyn told us about this interesting National Geographic programme she watched about the African Hyena. Apparently they’re not as thick as I thought. Personally the Hyena has always been least of my favourites in the animal kingdom. I’ve always thought them to be weird looking animals with a laughing cry that is absolutely dreadful, but after listening to everything Bronwyn had to say I almost felt bad for disliking the Hyena so much. According to her, they have an impeccable social structure where a female is the matriarch. But before she could finish continue telling us all about the life of a hyena, we spotted a heard of buffalos.

They were in the open field grazing. My first thought was whether we’ll be seeing any horrid hunting, but before I could mention it the game ranger pointed out lions hiding in on the outskirts of the open field. This was it! The big moment any tourist either dreads or hopes to witness. But after sitting there for an hour the lions decided that we seemed much more interesting than any tender buffalo. Ryno was not really impressed with this attention. It’s not that he doesn’t like animals, but in his whole life he’s only ever owned one dog. Whereas Bronwyn and I both have cats and I have two dogs. Watching Ryno’s facial expressions was absolutely priceless. It was a combination of fear and being not quite sure how to handle the situation. But soon enough they moved on and we were on our way again.

Heading back

In the next few days we saw more wildlife and then of course made a lot of jokes between the three of us. We’ve always been a tightly knit group of friends; very different in personality but still had a connection that others found difficult to understand. After our roundtrip through the Kruger National Park and a bit of sight-seeing in Mpumalanga we were on our way back to Cape Town.