Family trip to Cape Town at Easter

How much time do you have in South Africa? How flexible are you in leaving your accommodation in Cape Town?

My suggestion would be Addo Elephant Park...

Thanks for your reply. We are in South Africa for 18 days and are quite flexible about leaving our accommodation for a few days but were hoping to avoid losing too much time travelling, not to mention the hassle factor of travelling with kids.... I see that Addo is near Port Elizabeth - do you know roughly how long it would take us to get there and how easily?

Addo is just over 800km from Cape Town. It's a comfortable day's drive, even with the kids but as you have plenty of time, why not stop off for at least a night along the Garden Route? That splits the journey very comfortably over two days Each way, and you could even allocate a little more time to explore it.

We were there last July with our kids - 5 and 8 years old. We do that journey quite often to visit my parents and the route between CT to PE is very pleasant with good roads and beautiful scenery.

Be sure to look at our Addo photos to get inspired!

If you decide to stop overnight on the Garden Route, I'd recommend our favourite spots at Nature's Valley or Storms River Mouth.

Sorry Juliana, I overlooked your original question that asked for Big Five possibilities closer to Cape Town. I did a bit of research about this earlier this year -- you'll find it all here: Cape Town safaris.

They are all private game reserves, not National Parks. That translates to 'more expensive' :o).

But if you factor in the travel cost and time factor in getting to Addo, going 'private' probably works out about the same!

Thanks CTLocal - really helpful - the link to Cape Town Safaris was exactly the information I was looking for. We'll read up and work out the best solution for us - the drive to Addo certainly sounds like a nice thing to do in itself - so lots to think about.

Cheers!

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<hr>They are all private game reserves, not National Parks. That translates to 'more expensive' :o)<hr></blockquote>
Not only that, in some private game reserves your experience is less "genuine." One place I visited near Jo'burg had "feeding stations" for the animals, and predators and prey were kept separate. While it was nice to see the animals roaming around, it was all a bit artificial...

It's a 2 hour flight to Kruger. Go there. As far as I know all the places close to Cape Town are artificial like #6 says. If you want to go to Kruger you need to figure out if you want to put your kids on anti-malarials. Otherwise have a look at Pilanesberg. For Pilanesberg a 2 hour flight to Jo'burg - cheap because it is a high density route. No anti-malarials required.

Thanks Bosch - is there a direct flight to Kruger from Cape Town? I was under the impression that you have to fly to Joburg and then transfer by road...?

You can fly to Jo'burg, rent a car and do the 4 / 5 hour drive to Kruger but you don't HAVE to. There are three or so airports that service Kruger park. Nelspruit, Hoedspruit and Phalaborwa. There used to be direct flights from Cape Town to these airports but I'm not sure if currently you have to hop on to a different plane at Jo'burg. The routings change and sometimes they stop operating to one of the Kruger airports and then later reintroduce flights. You'll have to do a bit of research on the current situation yourself. Have a look at kulula.com, flysaa.com etc. There also used to be an option that if you did a long-haul flight with a carrier like SAA that you could hook one free domestic return flight onto that. The Cape Town - Nelspruit counts as one flight even though you might have to transit. Have a look into that as an option as well.