Taking kids on a safari hol?

I'm a frequent reader but an occasional poster these days. Great to see the web's friendliest forum is going strong.

I'm thinking of taking my wife and kids, who'll be 9 and 8, on a Safari holiday to Kenya. It's a 10 nighter starting with an elephant orphanage trip, then 4 days safari-ing at 3 different locations (all between 1 and 3 hours journey of each other). We finish with a flight to the East Coast where we'll have 4 nights relaxing in a hotel.

The girls are animal lovers and if anyone else has kids of a similar age, you'll know just how much they know and care about wildlife and the environment - partly instilled from us and partly from school. They have normal stamina for their ages but I'm not sure if it's going to be too much for them.

So, has anyone had any experiences of taking kids on long flights on a holiday with a busy schedule (even better if they went on Safaris)? If so, I'd love to hear your experiences and whether they/you coped or it turned in to a nightmare with grumpy kids and ratty adults!

Also, how did they react to taking malaria tablets, which I'm assuming they'll need and other injections that may be required? Any side effects?

Thanks and stay happy - Bud

Hi Bud,

While I have no personal experience of travelling with young'uns, I would say go for it. When I was travelling last year, I met a few people with quite young kids doing some horrific journeys, and as long as the kids are occupied (mp3, travel games, I spy etc) there's no problem. Ask at your local surgery about the drugs, but I assume there must be child safe options.

Do it, they'll thank you for it!

[anna]

I dont have any safari tales to tell but do remember being a kid and being taken on holidays to America and a few other hot places.. and whilst the pace of our holidays were always frantic with very early starts and late nights i remember being very grumpy in the mornings (no change there then!!) but being out and about and seeing so many different things was always worth it.

Looking back on those holidays I am more then grateful that i had the opportunity to see those places and do some amazing things...

So go for it and have a fantastic time!!

Kids adapt and will sleep anywhere so I wouldnt worry to much about it. I would think the parents will be the weary ones - I usually am - there is to many movies to watch on the plane and to much free alcohol - a good excuse to stay up. But I reckon you will all be so excited jet lag etc wont be an issue. No idea with the meds??

I agree...we've taken my daughter to South Africa and been safari'ing with her...she was only 3 at the time and she was fine. I would disagree about mp3 players and such like because it detracts from the beauty of such places...and they annoy other people in your group when the volume is high or a game is being played(experienced this while in portugal...really annoying )
They'll enjoy it and you will too.And there's no jet lag because the time difference is only a couple of hours so you can enjoy the holiday from day 1. As far as the meds go, I would see your GP for advise...
Enjoy!

Did the same thing last Feb, took 3 kids to Kenya on Safari. Smallest was 5, oldest 14. Flight out was effectively overnight, so they slept through most of it, although for some reason the 2 big ones were both sick as we started to descend for landing Apart from that they were OK both ways - make sure you have some books or something to read for the older ones, and all the flights have some form of TV entertainment

I can't remember what malaria tablets we had, however the kids had no reactions to them as far as I can tell. What I can remember is that we had to have private prescriptions for all the tablets and injections (Yellow Fever, Cholera, Typhoid, Hepatitis, Tetanus), and the whole bill came to over £500 for 5 people

We got a safari 'bus' to ourselves as we had kids - you really don't want to have to share it with anyone else


Worth it in the end

I've uploaded some pics here - http://s74.photobucket.com/albums/i2...650/Kenya2006/