Hi, we'll be travelling to SA in December with our nearly 5 year old and (by that time) 18 month twins. We're quite used to travelling with our eldest and the twins are used to fitting in with an active / outdoor lifestyle.
From looking around, lots of the reserves around Kruger have children's facilities and activities but only from 2 upwards. Can anyone recommend somewhere which may take under twos?? Refined is good, gritty is equally good; trying to avoid cheesy chintz please!!!
We are off to SA tomorrow from Australia with a 2.5 year old and a 7month old. We tried ot avoid the Kruger area and Northern KZN due to the need for malaria medication. Safaris in the Eastern Cape seemed a better bet for our young family. Addo Elephant PArk had some good family options. Most places won't allow kids under 6, even fewer allow younger kids on game drives. You may be better off doing self-drive tours.
As Nick72 said, most places won't take young children on game drives. How about Pilanesberg north of J'burg? You can do self-drive and/or take turns on game drives (one parent goes in the morning drive, the next in the evening..). Pilanesberg is malaria-free. There's a tent-camp in the park. Just avoid nearby Sun City and you'll have a good outdoor adventure!
In 2007, we took our daughter, then 2 years + 2 months old, to Kruger and had an amazing 4-day holiday that we all still talk about. We did not do a safari or go on a group tour. We had our own rental car (which we got in Jo'burg) and drove ourselves around, which worked out beautifully. I had packed a backpack full of things for our child to do in case she got tired of all the hours of slow driving, but that pack never got opened once. She was fascinated the whole time -- by both actually seeing animals as well as the possibility of perhaps seeing animals.
Through their web site, sanparks.org, I booked reservations in bungalows for 2 nights at Skukuza rest camp and 2 nights at Satara. This worked out perfectly for us, and I would do this again in a heartbeat. You do have to watch out for the monkeys trying to steal your food though -- one evening, we lost all our corn-on-the-cob straight off the hot grill. It's fairly easy to find out where the animals have been spotted (just ask or look at the posted notices each day), and where you see other cars stopped, there's probably animal activity there. Sure, you're not going to get the rare sights that only a guide would be able to find, but you can probably save that for a future trip when your kids are all old enough to enjoy having a guide. A fun thing that friends recommended: Several mornings we would pack our breakfast into the car & go drive to a watering hole, park, and eat our breakfast while watching all the animals come to drink.