Botswana
Family Safari Holidays

Wake up to the sounds of the bush in unison with the excited squeals of your children as they spot a thunder of hippos milling in the lily pads below your lodge. The UNESCO recognised Okavango Delta is filled with elephants twirling trunk-fulls of water over their backs in the afternoon sun, as well as the more endangered black rhino trundling along the sun-lit horizon. Head out for game drives in a rumbling 4x4 with your young explorers, tick sheets in hand, to see who can spot the most colourful bird or the tallest giraffe. Keep your eyes peeled for Botswana’s national bird, the Kori Bustard, with its fascinator-like hairdo and spotted sides, as it wanders through the delta’s grasslands. Follow behind soaring volts of vultures or a confusion of skittish wildebeest and let them determine the day’s route to create a seriously special Botswana family safari. Return to camp and let your wildlings explore the bush kitchen with a hunter-gatherer style cooking lesson, followed by adventure stories and marshmallows around the campfire, as a smattering of fireflies cover the surrounding scrub under the dark night sky.

The Kalahari is also a firm favorite with young safari-goers, so venturing here is a must for an enchanting insight into African desert life. Explore a contrasting array of wildlife, including the magical Kalahari meerkats that dash to and fro in the undergrowth. Pack binoculars for the whole family so that you can secretly spy on a meerkat perched precariously on a rock, keeping an eye out for nearby predators. The Kalahari is also one of the best places to surf, just not in the conventional sense. Entertain your thrill-seeking teens with an afternoon of sand surfing on some of the vast, amber dunes that fill this otherworldly setting. For a nighttime safari excursion, hop onto quadbikes and travel to the middle of the Kalahari for a night under the desert’s star-littered night sky while hyenas cackle in the distance. These are just some of the out-of-this-world experiences that you can enjoy on a Botswana family safari that can make it the adventure of a lifetime.