There are many ways I annoy my wife, but booking a luxury family safari a few hours north of Johannesburg has so far been the most extravagant. “It’ll be great,” I say, pointing to a pair of tots beaming from a safari vehicle in the brochure.

“It’ll be horrendous,” she sighs. “Those children are at least seven. Ours are five, three – and hello, what about the baby?”

The good news is the woman from Original Travel, the company arranging our trip, has no truck with words such as “horrendous”. “It’ll be fabulous,” she promises. “The kids can go horse-riding, the baby will have his own nanny. There are heated pools at both lodges. It’s nonmalarial. You won’t want to come back.”

The bad news is Original Travel is launching an Original Kids arm to its holiday empire: maybe it’s just desperate for publicity. I ring around. “Mmm,” ponders the man from Aardvark Safaris, for whom the family safari makes up about 50% of business.

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“We usually say six is when they really start to enjoy it.” The man from Audley Travel, another of a growing army of operators targeting families, doesn’t much like the sound of our baby, either. And he’s never even spent a night feeding it Calpol and changing its sheets. What have I done?

“What have you done?” asks my wife on the plane. Our three-year-old has just discovered there is no extra seat for his toasted sandwich, and is wailing like a trapped rabbit. The baby has leaked through his nappy, and is actually dripping onto my wife. I’ve got a horrible feeling it might not be wee. Only the five-year-old is happy, merrily kicking away at the seat-back in front of him, off his head with excitement because the in-flight entertainment carries the promise of two Cartoon Network channels. We have still to take off.

There are three things I learn in the next 11 hours. One: teething babies really produce a lot of diarrhoea. Two: there’s only so long a three-year-old can sleep on your lap before the blood starts congealing in your calves. Three: Africa is really, really big. Hours, days, weeks into our flight to Johannesburg, the steward wakes me to say the five-year-old cannot lie on the floor. For his own safety.

“Never mind, Ruben,” I tell him, “we must be nearly there.” We call up the moving map and watch in silent horror as the little plane jiggles backwards and forwards somewhere above Khartoum. Time to destination: six hours 13 minutes. “Get back on the floor,” I tell him.

At Johannesburg, my sister picks us up from the airport.

“Bloody hell,” she says. “What happened?” We look awful, like survivors of slaughter. But we feel great. The worst part is over. At her house, a go-away bird yowls “Go-away” from the tree by the pool. The boys have water-balloon fights with their cousin, while my wife and I laze around on the grass and wonder at the simple pleasure of being able to unfurl our limbs. “Africa is really happy,” says the three-year-old.

It is a golden two days. All too soon, though, the real test arrives. Safari. A minibus drives us the three hours north to the Waterberg plateau. Promisingly, the kids take the drive in their stride. Top Trumps are played. I-spy is enjoyed. The driver even spots a giraffe. “Look, giraffe!” he shouts. Ruben looks up from his Star Wars Top Trumps, clocks the giraffe, looks back down at his cards and calls: “Jedi Powers, 99.” “Jedi Powers, 37,” says his brother. We drive on.

Our first lodge is called Ant’s Nest. It is magnificent: just three thatched cottages around a shady lawn and pool, with the look and feel of a governor-general’s house circa 1910. If colonial chic existed, Ant’s Nest would be its showroom. It’s so good, even the wife is struggling to stay cross at me now. “Oh my God,” she says. “You’re a genius.”

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