SCHOOL HOLIDAY SAFARI
Ever struggled to know what to do with the kids on school holidays? Wellington parents Kate and Alex Dean took their children on safari, writes
When Kate and Alex Dean told their children they were planning an African safari, their 13-year-old son Noah, asked if there would be theme parks, restaurants and a nice hotel.
‘‘We said, ‘no, no and no’,’’ laughs Alex.
Instead, Noah and his siblings, Zac, 16, and Holly, 11, would spend their July school holidays travelling by truck through Kenya and Tanzania, across the red-dust plains and deserted grasslands of the Serengeti.
By night, they would cook by campfire and sleep in tents, and by day they would spot leopards sleeping in trees and migrating herds of elephants and giraffes.
As Noah told his classmates in a school speech when he returned, ‘‘In New Zealand, a possum in your back garden is a miracle and it gets immediately reported to your friends’ Facebook feeds. In Africa, a lion strolling through your backyard is a daily experience.’’
The Dean family would pass through a village where a 98-yearold man lived with his 20 wives, play football with the children of Maasai warriors and venture by four-wheel-drive into the two million-year-old volcanic Ngorongoro Crater.
‘‘Descending into the crater was otherworldly, like a scene from Journey to The Centre of the Earth, or Jurassic Park’’, said Alex. To finish their great East African odyssey, the Wellington family travelled to Zanzibar to wash off their red African dust by throwing themselves in the turquoise waters of the Indian Ocean.
‘‘It wasn’t what we expected a lot of the time, which was perfect,’’ said Alex. ‘‘It took us all out of our comfort zone and we thrived – I couldn’t be happier.’’
The Deans had travelled New Zealand extensively but, as a family, had only been as far as the Gold Coast when they booked their east African safari.
With Alex’s 40th birthday approaching, they knew they wanted to seek adventure – but were initially unsure of where to go.
‘‘We wanted the kids to realise the world wasn’t just made up of countries like New Zealand and Australia – that there was a third world out there,’’ said Kate, 37.
‘‘It was important to us they knew that not everyone wore Adidas shoes.’’
Late last year, Alex walked into Adventure Travel and told travel consultant Yvette he wanted to take his family on an adventure they would never forget. ‘‘I said, ‘we love animals, need a small organised tour for peace of mind, and want a place that opens my kids’ eyes to the world around them. She said, ‘how about Africa?’ ’’
By the end of the day, Alex and Kate had decided on a 17-day family safari through Kenya, Tanzania and Zanzibar.
‘‘Travelling with kids, we were slightly worried about our health and our security before we left, so an organised tour gave us peace of mind,’’ said Kate.
‘‘And while we were in Africa, we never once felt unsafe – everyone was very welcoming and hospitable.’’
Alex said, ‘‘You couldn’t put an itinerary like that together on your own, and get the variety of sights and experiences. If there was one truly amazing thing this trip delivered, it was the incredibly different landscapes – from arid farmland to red dust desert to the Usambara Mountains with green vegetation and waterfalls and rocky cliffs.’’
The Dean family’s trip of a lifetime began with the world’s longest flight (nearly 18 hours) from Auckland to Doha, and from there they flew to Nairobi, the bustling capital of Kenya.
‘‘As we came in to land in Nairobi, we looked out of the windows and saw zebras grazing on the runway,’’ said Alex. ‘‘It was like, ‘welcome to Africa’.’’
The taxi ride to their hotel was a shocking introduction to Nairobi culture and its chaotic road rules.
‘‘We saw crazy stuff like people standing between the lanes handing out newspapers from the president as we drove down the 100kmh motorway,’’ said Alex.
For the first two nights, the family camped at the Wilde beest Eco Camp and met the other 12 people they would be spending the next two weeks with – families from England, Australia and Canada – and coincidentally, another Wellington mother and son.
‘‘Our kids all said one highlight of the whole trip was meeting children from other countries and sharing the adventure with them,’’ said Kate.
In Nairobi, the family visited the Langata Giraffe Sanctuary, and the Nairobi Elephant Orphanage, which has a 24-hour response unit and has saved 400 elephants in the past 20 years.
Each elephant takes up to eight years to rehabilitate but even after they are released into the wild they return to the sanctuary when they are sick, or to show off their babies.
From Nairobi, the Deans travelled through Kenya and across the border to Northern Tanzania to camp outside Arusha, a town that sits in lush countryside near the foot of Mount Meru.
‘‘The African landscape rushed by and it blew my mind, truly magical,’’ said Alex. ‘‘I never grew tired of it, just staring into the distance as rock formations popped up, hills in the distance, and the red dirt and dry yellow grasslands.’’
The family visited a snakebite clinic – where the Maasai walk to get free treatment – and saw a terrifying variety of local snakes at a reptile park.
‘‘The python was massive!’’ said Alex. ‘‘There were varying degrees of poison, from none to certain death in seconds, it was so amazing to have all of those snakes right in front of us.’’
By day five, the family left the bigger trucks behind and moved into six-person, four-wheel-drive jeeps to head into the Serengeti National Park.
On dirt roads, the bone-rattling journey by jeep is affectionately called the ‘‘African massage’’, but thankfully the jaw-dropping scenery was a welcome distraction from the uncomfortable and noisy ride.
Although the rhino would elude them, the family would spend the next few days spotting many of the hoofed animals and fierce predators that make up the quintessential image of Africa, including lions, leopards, elephants, giraffes, buffalo, gazelles, cheetahs, and hippos.
‘‘Seeing the animals in their natural habitat is something else completely. In Africa, there will be
100 multi-tonne hippos in a large pool, merely 15 metres from an entire pride of lionesses and two male lions,’’ said 13-year-old Noah.
The jeep tour continued into one of the most spectacular sites in Africa, the Ngorongoro Crater.
A huge caldera, or volcano, which collapsed in during an explosion an estimated two million years ago, it covers an area of
265 sq km.
‘‘We were below the clouds and the sun streamed through in one corner – descending into it was otherworldly,’’ recalls Alex.
Over the next few days the family would camp at Marangu, at the base of Mount Kilimanjaro, Africa’s highest mountain at 5895 metres, then hike into the local village where the Chugga people once lived in caves.
They swam in the local waterfall, and walked out as darkness was descending – but it didn’t stop the kids from staying to play football with some local children.
From there the safari went through the Usambara Mountains, covered in native rainforest, where they hiked upwards and crept out onto a rock formation with a breathtaking view of the Maasai step below.
‘‘Suddenly the cloud cleared and there was the most incredible sweeping view – with a drop of more than 1km below,’’ recalled Alex. ‘‘I clambered out onto the rock, but stayed on all fours!’’
On day 12, the family left early to get to Dar es Salaam, Tanzania’s largest city and one of the most populous in East Africa – and the gateway to the beautiful island of Zanzibar.
‘‘The challenge was to get there before 3.30pm to beat peak hour traffic – but we didn’t quite make it,’’ laughs Kate.
‘‘In the heat, we sat in 10kmlong rows of stationary traffic while hawkers came up to sell us everything from toilet s-bends to mops and undies.’’
After hours in traffic, their first glimpse of the Indian Ocean was reward in itself, and from there the family caught a ferry to Zanzibar. ‘‘We sat outside on the roof of the ferry and enjoyed lovely views of the skyscrapers of Dar as Salaam and, of course, the wide Indian Ocean,’’ said Alex.
‘‘We’d missed breakfast that morning so I came back with a breakfast of champions: popcorn, spicy cassava chips, chocolate, and a Pepsi to wash it down!’’
Their final destination, Zanzibar, a Tanzanian archipelago off the coast of East Africa, is reminiscent of a chase scene in a James Bond movie; with its old Stone Town, labyrinth of alleyways, spice markets and chaotic honking traffic.
The family visited a spice plantation – sampling many exotic spices straight from the plants – and had a disquieting tour of one of the world’s last open slave markets, which was presided over by Arab traders until it was shut by the British in 1873.
The slaves were kept in dark and airless underground chambers, and a moving memorial remains nearby of a stone slave in chains.
They spent their final two days snorkelling, swimming, and handfeeding the massive tortoises introduced to Zanzibar more than
200 years ago from the governor of the Seychelles. After a mindblowing and frenetic fortnight in Africa, it gave them the space to process some of the wonders they had seen.
As Alex recorded in his journal on the flight home, ‘‘I’m so proud of my family – over landing is not a relaxing holiday, it is full-on and many mornings begin by packing up the tent and all our belongings by 5am or 6am. In summary, it was the best trip ever – Africa is in me now and already I want to go back.’’
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