The safari portion of our February trip was really incredible.
We flew from Cape Town to Port Elizabeth on Tuesday and were driven to Shamwari about an hour away. The lodge was inside Shamwari Game Reserve and it was perfect for families. We had two connecting rooms and we went on a total of 6 drives, each about 3 hours long. The evening drives began at 16.00 and we got back around 19.00. The morning drives began at 6.00 and we got back at 9.00. Our tour guide was Vincent and he had been a guide for 16 years! One of the coolest things was when he demonstrated his native language for us – with clicking sounds! Amazing!
We saw so many animals, and I can’t believe how close we were to them. Vincent definitely wasn’t afraid of getting close. On our very first evening drive we saw 4 of the "Big 5" animals – elephant, rhino, leopard and lion. We saw so many other animals throughout the six drives, including giraffes, hippos, springbocks, kudus, cheetah and so much more. We even saw the male lion, which we didn’t expect to see (there are only 3 in the entire reserve). It was so cool – we even got pictures of him yawning! But it wasn’t until the very last day that we saw the fifth of the Big 5 – the buffalo. It took a long time to find them, but Vincent finally did!
I had always thought we needed to wait until the kids were older until we went on a safari, but this was perfect. No one complained at all – everyone was excited to go on all the drives! And the food at the resort was amazing too. And, they even had a kids’ club that Meredith and William loved. I would recommend this trip to anyone with a family. It was absolutely amazing.
We flew from Cape Town to Port Elizabeth on Tuesday and were driven to Shamwari about an hour away. The lodge was inside Shamwari Game Reserve and it was perfect for families. We had two connecting rooms and we went on a total of 6 drives, each about 3 hours long. The evening drives began at 16.00 and we got back around 19.00. The morning drives began at 6.00 and we got back at 9.00. Our tour guide was Vincent and he had been a guide for 16 years! One of the coolest things was when he demonstrated his native language for us – with clicking sounds! Amazing!
We saw so many animals, and I can’t believe how close we were to them. Vincent definitely wasn’t afraid of getting close. On our very first evening drive we saw 4 of the "Big 5" animals – elephant, rhino, leopard and lion. We saw so many other animals throughout the six drives, including giraffes, hippos, springbocks, kudus, cheetah and so much more. We even saw the male lion, which we didn’t expect to see (there are only 3 in the entire reserve). It was so cool – we even got pictures of him yawning! But it wasn’t until the very last day that we saw the fifth of the Big 5 – the buffalo. It took a long time to find them, but Vincent finally did!
I had always thought we needed to wait until the kids were older until we went on a safari, but this was perfect. No one complained at all – everyone was excited to go on all the drives! And the food at the resort was amazing too. And, they even had a kids’ club that Meredith and William loved. I would recommend this trip to anyone with a family. It was absolutely amazing.
