To celebrate our son turning 13 we ended up doing the most amazing bar-mitzvah family trip in Madagascar the island (courtesy of Madagascar the animation movie which was his inspiration for asking this). Naturally our prime goal was to see the lemurs so in almost a month time we saw dozens of different lemurs, and yes they are really awesome in real life, one can spend hours just watching them in nature. We focused on visiting several national parks and some cities along the way. We also saw lots of birds, chameleons, crocodiles, zebu and some insects, frogs, lizards, crabs, fish, tenrec and a fossa!
We swam in crystal clear cold waterfalls and hot springs, snorkeled the Indian ocean, took a river tour on a boat, climbed the tsingy (sort of a stone "forest"), saw Milky Way as the ancient Greeks saw it, went horse riding in the desert and did a riksha tour in Antsirabe (if felt really awful like you are a rich white colonialist). The food was super tasty, the hotels and lodges were great, we bought some fantastic souvenirs to capture the memories and the locals are very nice and friendly, too bad our French is non existent :( so we couldn't really bond.
So if you want a wild African adventure in a safe and unique place don't think twice, go to Madagascar. The only word of caution from us is under no circumstances to use Air Madagascar, they managed to cancel 4 out of 5 flights we had including international ones...
See the
"100 Best Animal Photos from Madagascar" gallery for photographs of all kinds of living creatures we met (except for people).