Winter sun holidays

[SaucySal]

I need to book a holiday for my family (girls aged 4 and 10) in January. The travel agent is trying to flog me a Caribbean pacakge and is insisting we would "never need to leave the complex", which fills me with dread; DH would certainly never plump for this (bored after one day. I sort of agree, although the idea of doing flap all has a certain appeal for me...

Can anyone suggest a holiday somewhere warm which could offer us a combination of sightseeing/pool action?

I would rent a house in Barbados. Some lovely places with pools, nice island to drive around and pretty safe ime.

South Africa?
Loads of beautiful villas with pools etc and lots of options for holiday excitement; mountains, beaches, safari, cultural / history, wonderful food / wine and that's just the Cape!

Never been, but I'm quite fancying Sharm El Sheik in Egypt. Saw a travelogue thing on Sky about it and I'm sure there's reviews on MN.

With girls that age you should look at the holiday village in sharm el Sheik - we're going at Christmas with our 2 year old and it gets very good reviews of trip advisor.

We've done lots of winter sun holidays to either the Caribbean or the Maldives but this is the first one for Sproglet so we decided on a shorter flight, but to somewhere where sunshine was guaranteed. our options were egpyt or cape verde. Plumped for Egypt as beaches are safer with very shallow water so perfect for a little one.