Reviews
DE
35-50 years of age | Experience level: 2-5 safaris
Just Perfect!
My husband and I just returned from a 3 week vacation in Africa, 14 days of which were spent in Tanzania and coordinated by Africa Migration Safaris. Julias at Africa Migration Safaris worked with our travel agent Hillary (also impeccable service) to arrange a 7 day Mt. Kilimanjaro hike, 4 day safari, and 3 day Zanzibar beach vacation. Every moment of this trip exceeded our expectations. If you are looking for a Kili climb/safari tour operator, look no further. Seriously, don't hesitate - log off of this website right now and just call Africa Migration Safaris. You will not be disappointed.
We did a 6 night/7 day climb on the Machame route for Mt. Kilimanjaro. We paid for a group climb but learned from Hillary a few weeks before our trip that we were upgraded at no extra cost by Africa Migration Safaris to a private climb. I was a bit nervous about this at first since I was hoping to have other people in a group with us to "encourage me along" and to have people to talk to while we were on our hike. Turns out, that was not needed at all! My husband and I were rather happy to not have others in our group with us since we were quite quick with our pace and noticed other groups were held back by a few sick or slower climbers. Nothing against slower climbers at all, but it's nice to be able to go at your own pace and leave camp each day whenever you choose (we liked to leave a bit later around 9 AM since we liked sleeping in a bit and taking our time with breakfast). The personalized service we received from the 14-man crew (yes, FOURTEEN people for 2 climbers!) that accompanied us on our hike was impeccable. We had 2 guides, 1 cook, 1 waiter, 1 tent/toilet porter and 9 other porters carrying food and all the camping equipment. The guides, Christopher and Alex were EXCELLENT and spoke English very well. Every day they would accompany us on our hike, would help us anytime we needed our poles or gloves held when we stopped for a drink of water, never made us feel rushed, were very knowledgeable about the plants/wildlife in the park, gave us words of encouragement throughout the hike, and had extreme patience with us during tougher parts of the climb (which they made look easy). We got to know them over the course of the 7 days and really enjoyed their company. They would give us "briefings" at dinner every day to let us know what to expect the next day, would check at least twice each day on how we felt (breathing, status of our stomach, any pain). They were trained in first aid and handling altitude sickness, which was very very comforting (and thankfully we didn't have any issues with altitude thanks to the route we chose which allows sufficient time for acclimatization). Alfred, our amazing waiter, was a sweetheart and would greet us every day with an encouraging smile, bring us our delicious meals, would take our wet clothes for us to hang in the mess tent to dry every day, greet us when we got back from our hikes to take our bags, help us take off/put on our gaitors etc. On the last day (summit day) he even met us about an hour before camp on our way back from the summit to greet us with delicious juice/hot tea and to help us carry our bags. He held my hand through some of the treacherous sections of rock that need to be navigated before reaching camp which many people slip on due to exhaustion from the 7 hour trek up to the summit. John, our tent/toilet porter was also one of our favorites. He always greeted us with a huge smile, helped us with our bags when we would return from hikes, didn't seem to mind at all the unpleasant job of cleaning toilets or setting up the tents, and would encourage us with congratulations and friendly words each day when we would return from our long hikes. Matata, the AMAZING cook would make delicious, healthy, well-balanced meals for us every day. Because we knew we'd be eating camp food for 7 days, we came prepared with Immodium and Cipro in case of travel's diarrhea...but NO NEED! We didn't get sick even once during the trip and Africa Migration Safaris even sent 3 additional porters to meet our cook on Day 5 to deliver us fresh food for the remainder of the climb so that we don't get sick. Now that's what we call SERVICE!
Every night, the porter's tent would echo with sounds of happy chatting and laughter - which seemed a big contrast from other company's porter tents. We loved Africa Migration Safaris because they are one of the only companies who are also part of an NGO and pay their porters fairly and abide by park regulations on maximum pack loads the porters are allowed to carry - and it was clearly evident from what we saw and what we heard from our guides that the crew was happy and really enjoyed working for Africa Migration Safaris This meant a lot to us, because we had heard some companies pay their porters suboptimal wages, feed them only once a day, and don't supply/ensure that porters have appropriate clothing to deal with the harsh conditions of the mountain. We were appalled to see some porters from other companies had sneakers on (doesn't matter how much of a pro you are, the slippery rocks, freezing temperatures, and muddy conditions on the mountain are no match for sneakers!) We even stopped on Day 3 of our hike to find an old 50-something year old Porter from a company called Private Kilimanjaro freezing in a hail storm by a big rock. Everybody from his group had left him and he was shivering and couldn't carry his pack. We quickly learned he had stomach pain and didn't eat more than a half cup of tea that morning and had no energy to keep walking (not to mention he had no gloves and no dry clothing in his pack to replace the wet clothes on his back). Being a pharmacist, I had come prepared with meds and knew right away he needed to be put on antibiotics, so I gave him a course of cipro (had our guide translate how he should take it), and some other supportive meds. Even though he serviced another company, our guide carried his pack on his head in addition to his own pack (amazing) and a few of our other porters who were behind us accompanied him to camp. We saw him the next day and he was back to 100% and thanked us profusely for our generosity! I still can't believe another company could have even let one of their porters go out like that, let alone leave him stranded behind. Our porters always traveled in groups of at least 2 so that they had a companion in case something went wrong.
All in all, we LOVED our Kili hike and would recommend this life-changing experience to anyone who have an appetite for adventure. We miss our little Africa Migration Safarismountain family now that we are back and are left with nothing but good memories from this incredible trip.
The safari we went on, also serviced by Africa Migration Safaris was well planned and we also had a great, knowledgeable guide (Alex) who had many years of experience. We did 1 day at Lake Manyara, 1 day at Ngorongoro crater, and 2 days at Serengeti. One day at Serengeti would have been just fine actually, since we had already seen every animal we wanted to see by Day 3 (thanks to the help and knowledge of Alex) but we ended up still making the most of the 4th day and relaxed at the camp for most of the day and saw a pride of 4 lions during the 2 hours we did end up going out.
Lastly, we went to Zanzibar for 3 days for some days to relax. We were supposed to stay at Echo Beach Resort for 2 nights but to our horror, when we arrived, the owner of the resort told us that she mistakenly only had us down for 1 night and realized the day before that the hotel was sold out for the 2nd night we were supposed to be there. This was shocking since we had booked 4 months in advance and Julias at Africa Migration Safaris had even confirmed our booking with the owner on multiple occasions. We obviously were unhappy and called Hillary right away who contacted Julias, who arranged to have us stay in the Presidential Suite at the Baraza resort down the street for the 2nd night for no additional charge! WOW! We were blown away...and quite thankful in the end for the mixup since the Baraza was MUCH better than Echo Beach and the Presidential Suite was to DIE FOR. This only confirmed even further how incredible Julias and Africa Migration Safaris were in every way.
The ONLY constructive feedback we have for Africa Migration Safaris is in regards to the domestic flights between Serengeti to Zanzibar and Zanzibar to Dar Es Salaam. We had asked in advance whether we would have any issues with the weight of our bags on the domestic flights, since we had a lot of bags (4 in total) with us for our 3 week trip. We were told there shouldn't be any issues but turns out, they tried to charge us a hefty fee for overage on both flights going and returning to Zanzibar. Thankfully when our travel agent told Africa Migration Safaris about the hassle, they agreed to compensate us for any fees we ended up having to pay. Again, this was a reflection of the classy service provided by Africa Migration Safaris Thanks Africa Migration Safaris for giving us the vacation of a lifetime. We would definitely travel with Africa Migration Safaris again
DE
35-50 years of age | Experience level: first safari
“Friendly-Excellent company that goes above and beyond”
Went on safari and Kilimanjaro climb with Africa Migration safaris. Excellent experience. Africa Migration safaris was the most responsive of the several companies we contacted to ask about trip options. Julias, the co-owner personally handles correspondences, and you can tell she cares. When out airline lost our luggage, Julias and his staff helped to ensure we got it back before our Kili climb, even though it was Saturday afternoon and the office was closed.
Safari and Kili climb were both well planned and executed. We highly recommend Africa Migration safaris for Safari and Kili climb.