South Africa vacation proves instructive for kids, delightful for all

In 1993-94, during a year with the United Nations Peacekeeping mission in Mozambique, I discovered that neighbouring South Africa was the ideal spot for rest and recreation. Those were heady days, when a new South Africa was born from the ashes of apartheid, delivered by Nelson Mandela. For us in Mozambique, there was a special connect: Mandela was the “special friend” of Graca Machel, the charismatic widow of the first Mozambican president, Samora Machel (they were later to marry).

So when my wife, Sonia, and ten-year-old, Meera, buttonholed me in March and demanded to know where we were travelling last summer — “Not Kumaon again, Papa”, declared Meera — it was with all the casualness of someone playing the Ace of Spades that I said: “Hmm… how about South Africa?” In no time, our party expanded to include my niece, Mandakini, and her two children, Noor and Nishq.

Six of us landed at Cape Town on a cool afternoon. At the airport, we picked up the seven-seat van we had pre-booked. And then we set off on an hour-long drive to Simon’s Town, where generous friends had offered us their lovely seafront home. The quaint, one-street town is home base to the South African navy. More importantly, it has the Boulders Beach Penguin Sanctuary: home to some 3,000 penguins. As we turned in, we found penguins waddling along serenely. There is nothing quite as incredible as driving behind a penguin marching down the street, and the children hissed delightedly: “Don’t blow the horn, DON’T BLOW THE HORN.”

Over the next 12 days, we were to live with the braying sound characteristic of African penguins, which gave them the name of Jackass Penguins. Boulder Beach is a conservation miracle — in 1982, the penguin population had been reduced to just two pairs before strenuous recovery brought them back from the brink.

The panorama at the Cape

Our first major expedition was to Seal Island. This is a rocky sliver of land an hour by motorboat from Simon’s Town, where some 64,000 Cape fur seals lie about sunning themselves. Intermittently they plop into the frothing waves and gambol around. Seals are not big on personal hygiene, and their powerful bouquet inspired the children to rename the place Stink Island. A special treat during our boat ride was a curious Bryde’s (pronounced Broo-dess) whale. It surfaced right next to us and then performed diving tricks; now circling, and now swimming directly beneath our boat, keeping the kids guessing where it would surface next.

A rhino on the prowl

Our next outing was the Cape of Good Hope, where Portuguese explorer Bartolomeu Dias landed in 1488 and established a direct trade route between Europe and India. Contrary to popular perception, this is not that tip of Africa, where the Indian and Atlantic Oceans meet — that is actually three hours’ drive away, at Cape Agulhas. But the Cape of Good Hope has captured the imagination of sailors and explorers, who refer to it as simply “the Cape”. The Cape is part of the Table Mountain National Park, an extraordinarily biodiverse habitat. It offers a spectacular seascape of towering granite cliffs pounded endlessly by giant waves.

This was the only place we visited a second time — this time with the renowned naturalist, Craig Foster, who even the children recognised from the BBC serial, Blue Planet. Snorkelling in a (freezing) tidal pool at the Cape, Craig showed us an octopus, sea urchins and fish spawn. Watching us from the shore was a troop of Chacma baboons, led by a magnificent alpha-male, vicious and strong enough to take down a leopard. Meera had left the door of our car open and the baboons got inside, happily upending all our belongings before concluding that nothing was edible. Not many kids have a Harry Potter volume autographed by baboon teeth.

Up close with the dassie

Finally, no trip to Cape Town is complete without visiting Robben Island, the prison where Mandela spent 18 of his 27 years. Our tour guide, a woman from Mandela’s Xhosa tribe, described the ruthless efficiency with which the prison was run, calling to mind the Nazi death camps of World War II. Over coffee, she demonstrated to us the amazing Xhosa language, consisting of a range of tongue-clicks so complex that it takes Xhosa children at least five years to master.

The days whizzed past too quickly. The amazing Two Oceans Aquarium, featuring full-grown sharks with names like Dana; the gemstone factory where the kids learnt about Africa’s rich mining heritage; the astonishing, century-old Kirstenbosch Botanical Garden. Between visits, we discovered Cape Town’s superb eating — great seafood, deserts to die for, superb wines and prices that make New Delhi seem wildly expensive.

All too soon, it was time to move on to Kruger National Park. As we drove out the African sky was lighting up in a high wattage sunrise. Watching us from the side of the road, six penguins lined up to bid farewell.

Visitors to Kruger usually fly in to Nelspruit airport, in the province of Mpumalanga. We had booked the Umkumbe Lodge in the Sabi Sand Game Reserve, which many consider to be Africa’s premier reserve for viewing leopards. As it turned out, we were to see much more.
 

Game safaris take tourists to see the wildlife in open Land Rovers, modified with three rows of elevated seats that allow ten passengers uninterrupted views on all sides. A game ranger expertly drives one’s Land Rover and a tracker — expert on locating wildlife — sits in a bucket seat welded to the front of the vehicle. The vehicles are connected on radio and when one encounters a leopard or lions, the others are quickly alerted to home in on that spot.

A pride of seven juvenile lions

Our ranger, a six-foot-four youngster called Dani, turned out to be (or so the kids insist) the best guide in the world. While driving along twisty roads, through river beds and patches of forest, Dani regaled us with delightful tales about the creatures we encountered at every turn — zebras, wildebeest, giraffes, rhinos and, that omnipresent bird, the red-billed hornbill, immortalised as Zazu in The Lion King. Then, the radio crackled into life and, after a quick conversation, Dani raced us towards where a leopard had been spotted.

The thing with big cats is that, no matter how many photos one has seen, the real thing invariably reduces conversation to gasps. The one sitting on a tree before us was named The Angel because, as Dani pointed out, she was flawless — not a scar anywhere, not a spot out of place. The Angel was spectacularly unfazed by our gawping, looking away, yawning and then gliding down from the branch into the underbrush.

Over four safaris we saw pretty much every major African wild animal. Besides the Big Five (lions, leopards, rhinos, elephants and buffaloes) we were lucky to spot a honey badger and a pangolin — an animal so rarely seen that the rangers took selfies with it. Only on the last morning did we encounter lions, a group of seven young males that Dani said might go on to become Kruger National Park’s most dominant lions.

Boarding our flight home, the children chattered on about all they had seen and done. We adults felt the smug glow of parents who have exposed their children to a worthy curriculum of zoology, history, anthropology and botany — and had a ball while doing it.