Seven Wonders Safaris

Not recommendable! Book your safari with a different operator, safe the trouple!

I booked the 5-Day Group Joining - Manyara, Serengeti and Ngorongoro luxury package with Seven Wonders Safaris.
Initially everything was really great. Evelyn helped me greatly with getting my lost luggage from the airline to the hotel, all the driving worked out really great and the first day we changed the schedule from Manyara to Tarangire (more animals in Tarangire). We had a wonderful day at Tarangire. The driver Nestory was very experienced and a great park driver/guide. The disaster started from day 2!

I got picked up 2h delayed by an old driver called Abdul. Instead of driving towards Serengeti we drove back towards Arusha to pick up other people from the shared Safari. Why he didn't pick up the others first and me last was unclear to all of us. After arriving at the camp side, we had been told that one of the cars is damaged and the entire group of 12 people needs therefore to wait here for a replacement car to arrive. After having lunch and waiting another 2 hours we finally started the drive towards Serengeti. The drive didn't last very long since the police stopped us and denied us the drive, since the car lacked the permit to transport passengers. After waiting for approx another hours we finally started driving to Serengeti. We arrived the Serengeti park entrance just a few min before they closed the gate around 6 in the evening. From there its another 1h drive to the accommodations/camp sides. Here is where the real mess started. Abdul had clearly no idea where any camp side was. So we spend the coming 5h driving through the dark Serengeti Park, while helping the driver with google satellite images. Abdul constantly insisted that he knows the way, while it was very obvious that he was just randomly driving around (trying to enter roads with clear signs private only, making turns all the time, messing up left/right etc). After 5h I gave up finding my accommodation and we drove back to the main camp side, where we figured out that the car with the cook and tents never made it to the campsite. So the majority of the group had to asked complete strangers if they could join them in their tents without a mattress and sleeping bag. Since it was already 1am I decided to sleep with the driver in the car. Luckily for me the damaged car with the tents arrived in the middle of the night and I got a tent to sleep in for a few hours. During the entire day Seven Wonders ignored all our messages! We could reach anyone in their office. Even the day after I got mostly ignored by Evelyn. This was not the luxury version of safari that I pictured.
I am deeply sad to see how bad the company is handling problems. I can totally see how you can have a great time with Seven Wonders, but be aware that the moment anyone runs into problems, you will be let alone by the company. Problems can and will arise, its the way you handle them and how you communicate with your clients!

Seven Wonders tried to make things good the coming days, by providing me with a private driver and refunding part of the trip, which is the reason why I gave one extra point in the rating. But I would not recommend this tour organizer to anyone!

Maybe worth mentioning that paperwork was done wrongly when we left Serengeti and the driver had to bribe the guards to let us leave the park. Also the transport from Ngorongoro to Arusha lacked some kind of documents, so we were driving around police checkpoints or bribing the police officers to keep going.