Ultimate Family Holiday Vacation

Christmas Eve did not deliver snow or reindeer on the roof, but the experience was nothing less than sensational as we got to experience stunning sunsets over the African landscape. Standing in front of our open safari jeep for “sundowners,” cocktails in the bush, we wondered in awe at the vast pre-dusk horizon as a lion roared in the distance and the sun slowly disappeared.

Christmas and New Years are a time to spend with family and most years we have been lucky enough to be together with at least part of the family. It’s a magical time of celebrating its origin, sharing special meals and preparation responsibilities. For almost 25 years, we have organized our own safaris in multiple African countries. During these years we have come to love Africa, the exciting wildlife, flora, and fauna of this vast continent under the limitless horizon. A dream that began many years ago was to take our family to experience it with us.

Over Christmas and New Year’s, that finally became a reality as eight of us flew to Johannesburg in South Africa after meeting up in Atlanta and continuing the very long non-stop Delta flight. The airline was the first to fly there non-stop from the US almost twenty years ago. Previously, we had night stopovers in Dakar, Senegal, or flew via Europe.

After one night near Johannesburg Airport, we continued with South African Airlink into Kruger National Park, Mpumalanga Airport. The Perry’s Bridge Hollow Boutique Hotel is situated near an entrance to Kruger National Park in the subtropical farming town of Hazyview. The area supplies 20% of bananas and 30% of macadamia nuts in South Africa. From here we visited the Panorama Route offering spectacular views of the third largest canyon in the world, Blyde River Canyon, God’s Window high above the river. Mariepskop is 6,378 feet above sea level. Bourke’s Luck Potholes at the confluence of Treur and Blyde Rivers are cylindrical rock formations formed over millennia from erosion of the swirling waters with stone coloration from white to yellowish, brown to intense black.

The next day was our family’s first introduction to safari, driving into Kruger National Park. This area was originally inhabited by indigenous people and later frequented by Europeans who almost decimated the wildlife here. South African President Paul Kruger was instrumental in forming the Sabie Game Reserve in 1898.

A greatly expanded park was opened to the public in 1926, totaling 7,500 square miles, offering a wide diversity of ecosystems and an abundance of wildlife, including the “Big Five,” lions, rhinos, elephants, leopard and buffalo. Our destination was the Idube Lodge located in Sabi Sand, a private game reserve within Kruger National Park and accessible only to guests of a few lodges within the concession, including Richard Branson’s Ulusaba. This more exclusive area allows safari vehicles of the lodges to not only drive on all park roads but also track animals off-road. On our first day of three nights at this beautiful lodge. We already got to view four of the Big Five!

We enjoyed our own private jeep where everyone had 360 degrees open air view. With the help of a tracker seated on a jump seat perched over the front left fender, our ranger brought us much closer than expected to animals our family had only seen in zoos. We followed a magnificent leopard through the bush over steep hills, through riverbeds and along rock formations. It was an exhilarating experience to sit seemingly unprotected in an open jeep. However, our ranger and tracker were obviously well educated in the behavior of the animals surrounding us and did not seem at all concerned. Our game drives took place daily in the early morning at sunrise and during the late afternoon. In the morning there always was a stop in the middle of nowhere surrounded by the sounds of nature while our driver served us coffee, tea, hot chocolate, and breakfast shortbreads and in the afternoon majestic sunsets were enjoyed from a bar set up on the front of our jeep while being serenaded by a cacophony of sounds emitted by hypos, Egyptian geese, and grey go-away birds.

The” sundowner” experience of cocktails and wines, exposed to the elements, surrounded by the sounds of nature is a thrilling experience. During the remainder of the days, we were spoiled at our luxury lodge with sumptuous meals, cocktails, afternoon teas, spa treatments, and enjoyment of the pool area, as well as our own luxury rooms with private plunge pools and game viewing from the decks.

Two other safari destinations followed this terrific experience. First, the “Train on The Bridge” in Kruger National Park and Jock Safari Lodge situated in the first Private Reserve that was opened inside Kruger back in 1982.

In the 1920s, the Shalati Railway, named after a legendary African warrior queen, provided an entry to the park for tourists and hunters. A nine-day train journey began in Pretoria, the administrative capital of South Africa, and finished in Maputo, the capital of Mozambique on the southeastern coast of Africa. The train made a scheduled overnight stop on the bridge over the Sabi River in Kruger, offering sightings of hippos, buffaloes, crocs, and elephants. However, originally the train line was built by Europeans from France and Belgium for transport from the South African gold fields to the seaport of Maputo and export by sea, circumventing the British occupied ports of Africa at that time. As many as 250 trains a week loaded with gold and agricultural goods rumbled through the sensitive nature of Kruger National Park.

Eventually, the train was rerouted outside the park because of the environmental impact on wildlife and nature and completely closed in 1973 after the gold rush.

The bridge in the town of Skukuza on the edge of Kruger National Park, where the Shalati tourist train had stopped on its nine-day adventures, was left in disrepair for many years. It remained so until Jerry Mabena, CEO of Thebe Investment Services, discussed an ambitious plan with the South African government to refurbish the bridge and rebuild a collection of twenty-four vintage 1920 era train carriages. Luxury hotel rooms with large private showers, a self-standing bathtub, separate rain shower, and floor-to-ceiling windows offered spectacular views of the river and wildlife below. Even the beds were kings as compared to the very small beds on most luxury vintage trains. The train was stationed permanently on the bridge, a bar and a swimming pool hanging from the middle of the bridge on a concrete pole were added in addition to another larger swimming pool, restaurant, reception area, and five more rooms at the end of the bridge on land. The hotel opened in 2020, and my family and I enjoyed the luxury combined with outstanding service and delicious, creative meals for three nights. Game drives in Kruger were included twice a day. Although we were treated to spectacular sights of lions, leopards, elephants, wild dogs and more, we had to share with the general public on open roads of the park instead of the privacy of the private reserves. Fortunately, our ranger did his best to stay away from the crowds. And, the experience observing hippos, buffalo, and crocs from the privacy of our bed, bath, and shower on the train was a truly unique experience.

And despite some sightings being limited to the general park roads, the number of wild dog, hyena, and baboon troops, nursing, grooming, and mating was astounding!

On our last three nights of this fabulous end-of-year safari, we returned to a favorite retreat of ours, Jock Lodge, in the first Private Reserve to open inside Kruger National Park.

The lodge is named after the story of Jock of the Bushveld, a 19th-century Staffordshire Bull Terrier cross who was adopted by a young lad who came to the area at the time of the gold rush to try his luck. The book, written by Sir Percy Fitzpatrick, became an instant success in South Africa. The small hero dog adventures defending his master against wild animals, people, and nature is still a bedtime story for many children in South Africa.

It speaks for itself that several of the staff have worked here for many years and greeted us as family, although our last visit was four years ago. Access to game drives here is only open to guests of the lodge, thus securing completely private viewing of wildlife. We admired South Africa’s most colorful bird, the Lilac-Breasted Roller, and were enchanted following a leopard through the bush along the river and sharing our morning coffee from a spectacular rocky point while elephants slowly lumbered past us lower in the river. The lodge itself delivers all the amenities, including the possibility to sleep in an outside mosquito net-covered bed on the private deck of your luxury room and next to the private plunge pool.

Everyone in our family really enjoyed this experience, listening to the eerie sounds of the African night.