Travel Butlers African Safari Blog.

We are delighted to offer the following Special Offer at Kariega Game Reserve:

3 nights for the price of 2 for stays at Main Lodge, River Lodge, or Ukhosi when you travel between May and September 2008.

The 3 lodges all offer a fully inclusive African safari including accommodation, all meals and 2 activities per day.  Activities include game drives, river cruises, hiking trails, fishing, bird watching, canoeing, mountain biking, and horse riding.

The three lodges each have their own distinctive style, with Main Lodge’s family accommodation in 2,3,and 4 bedroom chalets, and River Lodges’ stunning setting being particularly popular with guests.

You can read more about the three lodges and the special offer online here.

With the school half-term holidays only a few weeks away, and Easter following on shortly afterwards, we thought this would be a good time to look at the most popular safari lodges for families visiting South Africa’s malaria-free regions.

A quick glance at the listing below show that the game reserves in the Eastern Cape (Kariega, Kwandwe, Lalibela, Shamwari, and Amakhala) are particularly popular with families, and safari lodges in this area take the first 7 spots. This highlights the great appeal of South Africa’s most popular family holiday route  which is a few days in Cape Town, followed by some time exploring the Garden Route Coastline and a safari in one of these malaria free reserves.

The remainder of the top 10 is made up with lodges in the Madikwe reserve up in the far north of the country on the border with South Africa, and somewhat surprisingly no lodges from The Waterberg area feature at all despite it’s convenient location just a couple of hours outside Johannesburg.

The Kruger area and KwaZulu-Natal are both considered low-risk malaria areas and are therefore excluded from this listing.

The full listing is:

1 ) Kariega Lodge
2 ) Kwandwe Ecca Lodge
3 ) Mark’s Camp
4 ) Long Lee Manor
5 ) Woodbury Lodge
6 ) Amakhala Safari Lodge
7 ) Leeuwenbosch
8 ) Little Madikwe
9 ) Jaci’s Tree Lodge
10 ) Madikwe River Lodge

This listing is ranked on the number of nights children under 12 have spent at each lodge based on recent bookings made by Travel Butlers.