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Congratulations on your soon to be born girl! I hope you are planning to name her Sabie or perhaps a similar Kruger-related name?!

Schooms, how wonderful congratulations.

You are going to get all kinds of advice. My concern would be maleria. I would sterr clear of high malaria seasons until you can take the proper precautions for the little one.

When my children were very young, Skuks was probably our favourite camp. Lets see what other mites say.

Schooms, you may miss you wife for the first few trips, but it does get better, just hang in there.

Schooms, when my wife was expecting our 2nd child we wanted to go to the park and our doctor recommended that we stay away from the malaria areas while she is pregnant, congrats on the baby and by the way my 2nd child was also concieved in the Kruger at Shingwedzi which is awesome.

The first time we took our 2 boys to the Kruger, our oldest was 3 and our youngest was 2, this is very young for the kids but they seemed to enjoy it a lot. We found that they were not really a problem for other campers and did not bother anybody.

the only slight problem was that we went to Shingwedzi and Letaba with our caravan in december and the heat at times was maybe a little to much for them although they absolutely loved the swimming pools at both camps.

We also made a effort not to drive around all day every day as they used to get tired and miserable if they were stuck in a car all day so we tended to spend a lot of time in the camps and drove around early morning and late afternoon.

The boys are now 8 and 7 years old and we are taking them to Shingwedzi this December and I am really excited to see how they react to the animal sightings as they are now old enough to really enjoy and appreciate that part of the world, they are looking so forward to it and are already nagging me to go. I remember going as a kid and I loved every minute of my trips with my parents there.

I think kids should go from a young age so that they can learn to preserve and appreciate what we have because it might not be there one day. It is by far the best place in the world.

When I saw the thread title, i thought you meant....

Thanks a lot guys, wife and I are really excited and are already looking at dates for our next trip as well as the camp we think will suit us best.

Hi Schooms

Our youngest is 6 months old and will in December go on her 3rd Kruger trip (not too bad considering she was born two months premature).

The first born has just turned three and according to my calculations will in December go on her 14th Kruger trip. She has become a serious bush baby and it will forever stay with her, because she is always begging to go back to the "lion garden".

I know this has been a touchy subject and will under no circumstances make any recmendations here. All I can tell you that we have been blessed with some wonderful times in Kruger with our kids and I would not do it without them.

Check out pages 8 - 10. Found it very interesting with vital information.

peace out.

Hey Guys,

I had a discussion with a friend the other day and he thought we were a bit disturbed when I told him what game we play during our drives in Kruger.

So I just want to know whether you guys have a similar activity or if we are indeed a bit weird?

I compiled a list of ALL animals in Kruger and assigned points to them. So to make a long story short, you divide into two teams {Left side and Right side}. Then you get points for each animal species you see {ie. a herd of Zebra's only count as a Zebra}.

At the end of the day we add up each team's points and then the losing team gets a 'penalty' drink or snack e.g. My wife don't eat Tomato's so she'll eat a Tomato for her penalty that evening. We try to be creative with the penalties like eating a spoon full of Cocoa etc.

It's a fun way of enjoying the bush and it forces you to appreciate every sighting, even an Impala sighting!

It sounds interesting Leopard74 - the penalties bit

We usually guess what animal we will see first when we enter the gate and the person who is correct get …. well nothing . It is just the guessing part that is the fun bit to us

We are also 'disturbed' l74.

When the children were quite young, and needed a bit of 'encouragement' I offered a 100g chocolate for the person to spot the first '????' of the day. This included the big 5, other predators and anything I deemed worthy. But......the winner had to share it. I would buy quite a stock and keep it in the cooler box.

Some days we would be nauseous by 7h30 and not feel like breakfast, and my stock would run out so I would have to replenish it. It was very competitive, and even my father joined in.

After an early trip. I was told 'we saw nothing today', so since then I have made animal and bird lists and they are completed when a sighting occurs. We have now been doing all this for more than 25 years, and I see no reason to become undisturbed.

The reason for us implementing this 'system' , is that my dad keeps on falling asleep and catching flies with his mouth. So now he's very scared of drinking stuff like Tonic Water. The irony is that he is now the best spotter in the car!

I also want to add birds to our list this year, but the problem is that we are totally clueless when it comes to birding. We already have some of the bigger bird species such as Eagles, Vultures, Owl's etc. on there, but we want to start learning the smaller fellows as well !

We also get quite competitive, sometimes there are major fights as to who gets the points. For example if we get to a viewing spot I usually drive past the 'entrance' and then rather enter at the 'exit' so that the viewing takes place on my side of the car!

I'm just glad to hear that there are other disturbed people out there!

We play exactly the same game Leopard and have been for many years. In fact my kids all grew up playing it and we cannot do Kruger without it.

We play that every day we start on a fresh list.
Who ever spots an animal rights it down.

You can only spot it once, so lets say baboon.
If I spot it I write it down. But if my dad spots it later during the day it doesn't count.

At the end of that day who ever spotted the most amount of animals gets a point.

Next day start over.

At the end who ever has the most points gets what ever he wants on the way home at any restaurant

Hi all we do the same thing however we give points to it and play cricket

We make 2 lists one for runs one for wickets and so we play. for example an Impale is 1 run and a Zebra is 2 runs etc a Lion is a six etc etc.

Wickets - Rhino, Or the less seen animals including snakes and some birds.

Normally the score is high before 10 wickets goes down but then the table turns and the badsman become the bowler.

Its great and before you know it the day is over and nobody was bored...