Ancient Wild Safaris

9 day trip - 5 days in Kenya, 4 in Tanzania

We travelled from Ireland in December 2017.
We would be keen to stress that this is a review of the booking company - African Adventure Safari, not of the safari itself.

The safari was, for the most part, brilliant. It would be hard to travel to the Masai Mara and Serengeti and not be impressed.

It appeared to us (and several others we met) that essentially, for the budget trips you paid a tour company who booked your place on a safari trip. Safari guides/drivers seemed to receive their assigned tourists each trip or each day. So, whilst the drivers (who seemed to work for several various companies) were very good, we couldn't credit this to the tour companies as there seemed to be little relationship between the two.

So, onto reviewing the booking company;
It was arranged and confirmed that they would collect us from the airport in Nairobi around 7pm. Upon arrival, there was no sign of anyone. We waited and eventually opted to use the mobile phone of a taxi driver. We rang Mike, who we had been dealing with us over email. He advised us that he was parking the car and would be with us in five minutes. After ten minutes, the random taxi driver came over and told us that Mike had called back and had asked us to wait by the road. Another twenty minutes passed, with the taxi driver waving to us every so often to indicate that it would be another five minutes.

Nairobi has a reputation and we were growing increasingly uneasy.
Eventually the taxi driver came back with the phone and handed it to me. It was Mike advising us that his driver had gotten stuck in traffic (odd, given that Mike said he was parking the car) and told us the taxi driver would take us. Given that I had just been handed the phone, I made sure to make him confirm a few of our details before we hung up. We were very clear with the taxi driver that we wouldn't be paying him for the journey as the transfer was already paid for. He wasn't very happy about this and made another call to make sure he would get paid.

The taxi driver asked us to wait while he got his car. Two cars pulled up (neither particularly looked like a taxi), he sent the first car away and the driver of the second one got out and our "taxi driver" got in. The route we took (presumably to avoid traffic) went through some very rough areas, with several fires burning by the roadside, through the outskirts of the city. We have travelled a lot (including countries like Venezuela, Colombia and Indonesia) but this was the most uneasy we have ever felt whilst travelling. The combination of being unsure about the taxi driver and the route we had taken had made us feel very apprehensive. This wasn't the start to our trip we had hoped for. As it was our honeymoon, we had booked through a tour company in order to avoid these specific issues.

After 40 minutes we pulled up at our hotel. Mike was there to meet us, with one of the safari guides. He wasn't very apologetic, but seemed friendly enough and gave us his mobile number to contact him through Whatsapp. We had booked the hotel through Mike and he asked for cash to pay for the room. We handed over the cash and it was only when we went up to our room and was able to check my emails that I realised that it was double the price we were expecting to pay. We checked the price on booking.com (which was also cheaper than the price we had been quoted). We texted Mike and he told us that the price he had quoted was per night, so was double what we were expecting and double the cost on booking.com. We were unhappy but there was little we could do.

After our trip to the Masai Mara and Hells Gate, which were both brilliant, we were taken back to Nairobi for a transfer to Arusha (Tanzania). We missed our bus, but that wasn't a problem because we just caught another one. We were met in Arusha by a taxi driver and taken to our hotel, which all went well.

The next morning we were starting a trip to Tarangire, the Serengeti and Ngorongoro. We met the 'boss' and who asked us what our itinerary was (he didn't seem to know what we had planned). He asked about water, we told him it was included in our trip, he asked about our transfer to the airport at the end of our trip, we told him that was also included. We found out later that the 'boss' is the boss of all of the drivers/guides in Arusha, so manages all of the trips that leave from there.

There was clearly very little coordination between the tour companies in Kenya and Tanzania.

The first night of our trip we stayed in a really nice lodge, but one of the other groups (all of the vehicles will stop to eat and sleep in the same places, so you will see a lot of each other) had to stay somewhere else because there had been a mix up and the lodge was overbooked. The next morning, everyone was moved to different vehicles because there had been a mix up with the bookings. This wasn't really a problem for us, but did take a while to be sorted out and a couple of groups had to wait longer than us because people from Arusha were joining them.

Once on the trip, again it was amazing and the driver/guide in Tanzania (Estome) was brilliant. Estome had a couple of different books on the animals and answered every single question we had. He stopped when we wanted to take photos, spotted more animals and birds than you could imagine, and was a really nice guy. Overall we enjoyed the experience in Tanzania more than Kenya, although we saw more animals in Kenya.

Some people from the other groups had problems with their itineraries not being followed and accommodation not being what was expected (this seemed to be people who has asked for an additional stopover or to not be in a tent or a shared tent). When they were booking, they were told it was ok, but once they were on the trip, they were sent along with the rest of us. A vegetarian in our group had to remind them a few times. We hadn't made any special requests, so we didn't have any of these issues.

In Arusha, we had been booked in to the Cloud View Hotel for our last night. Our diver had asked us where we were staying and had been speaking to the 'boss' through the day. When we arrived at the hotel there was no booking for us. Apparently the 'boss' hadn't received the information or money from Mike so no booking was made (this hadn't been mentioned until we were at the hotel's check in desk though). We were taken back to Arusha Tourist Inn and stayed there for the night (this hotel seems to owned by the 'boss' so a booking wasn't needed).

We text Mike about this straight away, but didn't get a response until the following afternoon, by which time we were in Zanzibar. Again, there was no apology and Mike's response was that they are looking for a new partner in Tanzania.

Overall, the trip was amazing and the guides, particularly in Tanzania, were brilliant. The issues we had were with the organisation and, with the exception of the pick up from the airport, were annoying but had no lasting effect on us.

Whichever company you book with, our advice would be to reconfirm everything before you travel (dietary requirements, transfers etc), take printed copies of your itinerary, be prepared to stand your ground on what is already paid for and included as part of your trip, and unless you are booking a bespoke trip, stick to the basic itineraries because people who had special requests didn't seem to get them. And have a great trip.