AMS Directors and Tour Guides
Amazing Memories Safaris
- Located In:
- Size:
- 5-10 employees (Founded in 2012)
- Member Of:
- ASTA, KATO, AMREF & Eco Tourism
- Tour Types:
- Custom mid-range & luxury tours that can start every day
- Destinations:
- Price Range:
- $130 to $500 per person per day (USD, excl. int'l flights)
Reviews
Email Steve Taylor | 50-65 years of age | Experience level: 2-5 safaris
Amazing 4-day safari experience
We were badly let down at short notice by another safari agency so I challenged several safari companies to organise a luxury 4-day safari at 1-days notice. Only Amazing Memories came through for us, turned up on time at our hotel in Nairobi at 6am the very next day and guided us on the most amazing 4 days in the Masai Mara and Lake Nakuru. Our driver 'Tony' was knowledgable, flexible and had the most amazing gift of being able to drive and spot game at the same time. I can thoroughly recommend The Mara Serena and Nakuru Sora game lodges as luxurious and with breathtaking views of the surroundings and wildlife. Overall - nothing to fault. Book with Amazing Memories with confidence. Thank you for the trip of a lifetime.
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Email Ruta | 65+ years of age | Experience level: first safari
Amazing Safari with Amazing Memories
My husband and I just returned from an 11-day safari in Kenya and Tanzania, and we will enjoy "amazing memories" for the rest of our lives, thanks to the advice, planning, and execution provided by Anne and her staff. When we first started planning this safari, we were literally overwhelmed by the large number of safari companies and tours available. We chose Amazing Memories based on the favorable reviews it had received -- and without question, we made the right choice. From the very start, we knew that we were in excellent hands, as Anne was terrific to deal with. She replied to all of our e-mails promptly, answered all of our many questions, made appropriate suggestions, and customized our itinerary and accommodations to meet our budget. We were fortunate to meet Anne, and she is as wonderful in person as she sounds in her e-mails.
We spent 2 days in Ol Pejeta (great for viewing rhinos), 1 day at Lake Naivasha (hippos at night on the lawn of the country club were amazing), 3 days in Masai Mara, 2 days in Serengeti, 2 days in Ngorongoro, and 1 day in Amboselli (largest elephant herds that we saw). The lodgings Anne recommended in each location were excellent, staff was very friendly, buffets were plentiful and good. The most important thing, of course, were the game drives, and they were superb due to our outstanding guides. James was our guide in Kenya for the first leg of our safari and became our friend. He had an incredible skill in finding the various animals, and we saw the Big Five within the first few days of our safari. In addition, he was a wealth of information about the animals and their behavior, the areas through which we traveled, the various local tribes and villagers. Ikamba, our guide in Tanzania, and Daniel, our guide upon our return to Kenya, were similarly knowledgeable and personable. Aside from being great guides, they also were great drivers on the often challenging trails in the game parks and knew how to position the vehicles for optimal photos. Moreover, they "shepherded" us through the border crossings and made sure that our check-ins at our various lodgings went smoothly. Since so much time is spent with the guides and the success of the game drives depends on them, it is critical that they be top-notch, and James, Ikamba, and Daniel certainly were.
One final note. Planning a safari (especially for the first time) can be daunting, and choosing the right tour operator can make the difference between a marvelous experience and a mediocre one. Amazing Memories Safaris lives up to its name -- it is truly amazing and does not disappoint. Our safari was as perfect as a vacation can be, and we are grateful to Anne and Amazing Memories for making it so. We recommend them most highly and without reservation.
CA
Email Joseph | 20-35 years of age | Experience level: first safari
Amazing Safari experience and memories, the name says it all!
Our guide, Daniel is the best guide you could ever ask for. He was extremely knowledgeable about all wildlife from every animal we came across to the trees and terrain. Any question that we had, he had an answer to! He was an incredibly capable driver both on the roads and off roads. We were able to see all the animals and up close and personal too! He was a great photographer so be sure to ask him for advice and tips on how to get the best wildlife shots! He is funny and easy to talk to and endlessly interesting if you are a curious soul. We learned so much about all the animals, the culture of the country, history, and so much more that we only wished we had booked a longer safari!
It's safe to say that you'll be in the best hands with Daniel as your guide! I highly highly recommend Daniel and Amazing Memories and when we come back they will always stay our first option!
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Email Nancy | 35-50 years of age | Experience level: first safari
Saw Big Five and More! Best priced Safari with nice accommodations
I researched many tour companies and many different safaris (and prices) and chose Amazing Memories. My husband and I took the private 5 day Amazing Safari and visited Lake Nakuru and Masai Mara, staying at the Flamingo Tented Camp and Sentrim Mara Lodge, both of which were nice. Anne responded quickly to my emails and answered all of my questions. She quickly sent me the itinerary and the quote, and gave me options to make it less expensive when I asked, even though it was an awesome deal for a 5 day safari staying in lodges. James, our tour guide, was great at getting us to the best spot to see the animals, even if there was a jam of multiple safari company vans around us. He was determined to make it a wonderful safari and it was! He stopped as long as we wanted to, got as close to the animals as he could (with awesome driving skills) and drove to see the animals that were on the top of our list. We saw southern White Rhinos, which are greatly endangered, Black Rhinos, Cheetahs, Lions, elephants, wildebeest, African Buffalo, hyenas, Hippos, Zebras, giraffes, birds, Ostrich, and more-- AND we saw a Leopard up close! James not only talked about the animals,but also talked about Kenyan Culture, which was great! We're very glad we picked Amazing Memories for our safari.
ES
Email Tamar Peters | 35-50 years of age | Experience level: over 5 safaris
Living up to their Amazing Memories name by helping us to create Amazing Memories!
Well what can we say about this AMAZING company Amazing Memories Safaris other than that they definitely live up to their name!!! What a a great trip we had with them. Right from the start they were so wonderful to work with while we created a brilliant experience of all that Kenya has to offer. Any problems we had were quickly and effortlessly dealt with. So impressed with their amazing Nairobi team who looked after us for our first few days and transfers - Joseph specifically! He is amazing and just so full of knowledge about Nairobi and what it has to offer. Then we had the delightful and very talented (at spotting and finding animals) Ronnie who was our guide and driver for our safaris. Just amazing and such a gift to be with on those long journeys. He is an expert in finding animals which was a real bonus. Just loved his laughter and personality as added significantly to the fun of our adventure. But I couldn't have created and enjoyed the adventure as much as I did without the incredible Anne who was truly an Angel to work with. 10 star rating if it was available. I highly recommend this company and its team as been the best experience and I have been doing events for over 27 years so really know what's out there. Asante sana!!!!!! See you in 2019 xxx
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Email Noah | 20-35 years of age | Experience level: first safari
Incredible Honeymoon in Kenya
My wife and I chose Amazing Memories Safaris for our honeymoon in Kenya. The experience was incredible and far exceeded our expectations. Our trip started with a pickup at our hotel in Nairobi. We were given a quick briefing about the safari as well as safari hats which was a nice touch. Our guide/driver Joseph was very knowledgeable and had a great ability to spot animals in the wild. We first visited Lake Nakuru where we saw many beautiful animals and birds. We stayed a the Lake Nakuru Lodge which was okay but not amazing. We then traveled to the Masaai Mara where we spent the remaining 3 days of our safari. While there we stayed in a beautiful lodge, the Mara Simba. We had the opportunity to see the crossing of the wildebeest thanks to Joseph as well as rare animals such as cheetahs, leopards and lions. Overall, my wife and I were very satisfied with Amazing Memories Safaris including the quoting/booking process, the guide, the vehicle and content of the safari.
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Email Romano | 20-35 years of age | Experience level: first safari
Adventure of a lifetime with people who truly are Amazing!
There are TONS of companies running safaris and we did a lot of research looking for just the right one for our honeymoon. We found Amazing Memories after browsing through Trip Advisor and other travel sites and our search was over. We ended up choosing Amazing Memories over our leading company because of Anne's thorough, quick, and helpful responses. She wasn't once pushy or rushing of us, knowing it was a big decision, and helped us design a unique experience in Kenya and Zanzibar, at a very competitive cost.
We were thrilled to be picked up upon arrival (we arrived a night early) by Joseph and another Anne (we called her little Anne) from our hotel promptly and with enthusiasm. They had an amazing day prepared for us. Little Anne updated us on some changes to our travel itinerary for the whole trip which Anne took care of without even asking. She had made our flights more convenient and had even gotten us an extra flight to make traveling easier, without us even thinking about the complications, and didn't add it to our bill- how thoughtful can you get???
We LOVED our time with Joseph touring Nairobi and were lucky enough to get extra time with him when we traveled back through on our way to Zanzibar. In a, yet again, AMAZING feat, Anne got us on an executive class plane for our trip to Zanzibar and we felt like royalty.
All of our accomodations were worked out in advance between Anne and myself. Being my first safari, she was invaluable in consultations for what to expect at each location, the beneifts of tents vs lodges at each stop, and what advantages of each type of lodging were. She was super patient and answered my questions with ease, even though I asked the same thing multiple times! I'm a worrier and she really made me feel at ease for all the preparations.
Everything from our vehicles to our departure were treated with the utmost care and it's clear that Anne and the staff of Amazing Memories value their customers, their work, and that everyone have a safe, fun experience. We were so lucky to get to see the Wildebeest migration in the Mara and our driver got us up close and personal with a myriad of animals. At each stop we knew Anne and her staff had our back and were doing all they could to ensure an amazing adventure.
Anne was easy to reach whenever I needed, and while I had no issues on my trip, I am confident she would have raced to make anything right for us. When our plans for dropping through Nairobi changed, she was already on top of getting us in touch with Joseph and ensuring a fun extra day.
We can't recommend Amazing Memories enough- they go above and beyond the already fantastic Kenyan hospitality. If you are looking for a company who will take care of you, be flexible, and offer an experience of a lifetime and a competitive cost, look no further!
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Email Francisco | 35-50 years of age | Experience level: first safari
A safari company to goes the extra mile to satisfy its customers
Me and my family just returned from a fantastic 8 day Best of Kenya private safari organized by Amazing Memories. Anne was very helpful from the very beginning answering my questions and she was very flexible accommodating my requests. The lodges and tented camps she selected for this safari were very a good, specially the Serena Tented Camp in Ol Pejeta, and the staff in all of them was very welcoming and friendly. Joseph, the senior guide in our trip, must be one of the best guides in Kenya. He proved to be extremely knowledgeable about wild animals and their behavior, sharing that knowledge in a fun and entertaining way. He was able to safely get us very close to lions, leopards, cheetahs, elephants, giraffes, hippos, zebras, ostriches, impalas, gazelles, etc We were really impressed when other safari vehicles were crowding around two lions, and he took our vehicle to an empty spot were he correctly predicted we would be able get a close look at those lions because they would move away from the other vehicles and come to the place where we were waiting. Joseph was also able to avoid a horrible traffic jam on our last day day on the road back to Nairobi by taking a detour that many other drivers didn't know about, so that we wouldn't miss the activities we had planned for that afternoon. I summary, Joseph went the extra mile to make our safari trip fun, safe and free of any worry. If you book a safari with Amazing Memories, make sure you ask Anne to assign Joseph as your guide.
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Email Tatjana | 35-50 years of age | Experience level: first safari
Wonderful and smooth long safari!
We just ended our two-week-long safari through Kenya and Tanzania and, as we are going through our photos it seems hard to believe how much we had experienced and seen in the past two weeks.
From the start, Anne was always promptly communicating and checking for every idea and wish we had, being that this was our first safari trip ever. Ours was a budget safari, which means we chose to stay at tented camps for two weeks, and were only treated to a lodge on our final night (Manyara Serena). The camps were excellent, clean, comfortable and some were even romantic.
Upon our landing in Nairobi, Anne and a couple of guys from the office welcomed us and took us to our hotel. On the first day of safari our Kenyan guide, Daniel, was waiting for us and from that point on it was a smooth breeze of a safari, without a single glitch whatsoever for the entire two weeks! Daniel was AMAZING, just as everyone and everything else about this trip, and on top of being a fenomenal guide and tracker in parks, he is also an interesting interlocutor and discussant. We had a fabulous time with him on the road. At the end of our Kenyan leg Daniel took us to the Tanzanian border and transferred us to the care of our TZ guide, Charles, a great, courteous guy, who managed the African massage roads along our route and managed to find leopard on multiple occasions for us, given that leopard was probably the only animal we did not encounter in Kenya. Charles also patiently helped us ship some of our bulky and excessive souvenirs back home, to make the rest of our trip, well, lighter.
The entire trip was spectacular; the employees at all places were the embodiment of courtesy and kindness; we saw many, many parks, but perhaps a few absolute highlights to help other people in planning their trip:
- Amboseli: Kili + tons of elephants - enough said.
- Naro Moru River Lodge, close to Ol Pajeta Conservancy: an overlooked but spectacular place from colonial times. It is old but is very well kept, clean, and safe from mosquitoes. The cottage we got had a fireplace and a bathtub, both of which we enjoyed very much, beautiful grounds for walking, and a breathtaking view from the swimming pool. The grounds teem with colobus monkeys as well, and give you plenty of opportunities to photograph them. In Ol Pajeta you will see and meet the most endangered rhinos, and we saw a big pack of lions as well.
- Maasai Mara NP - do not miss it even if you are visiting Serengeti! MM teems with animals, and even though the migration seems to be late this summer and we did not see much of it, there are animals in big numbers everywhere, big pack of cats, like the famous group of 5 cheetahs (Tano Bora), families of lions, 15 giraffes at a time, etc, etc. We also took the balloon ride and it was spectacular even though there were no millions of migrating animals underneath. I can only imagine what it is like with them.
- Hell's Gate NP - most likely the only park where you are safe walking or biking and taking selfies with animals, plus at the end of the bike route you get to hike into an exciting gorge. This was one of the very few times we got to use our legs on this trip and it was very much needed.
- Ngorongoro - needless to praise this spectacular place, but just to point out that Anne's choice of a coffee plantation as our accommodation was wonderful, with clean air and another opportunity to walk around coffee and bean-dotted hills.
- Lake Natron- we were lured by the famous photos of red water, only to get disappointed that those photos were taken nowhere near the NP, YET, what we experienced here took the blues away and made it our final highlight. We got to hike into a river canyon to the secret waterfall from which the surrounding Maasai villages and lodges take their clean water; swim and tobogan down the river, and enjoy a really exhilarating and wet hike. The next morning we took another 2-hr walk from the camp to the lake itself through villages and made friends with the local ladies who told us took their goods to the market - only to realize that we were the market itself, as they were trying to sell their good to us for most of the trip. Nevertheless, it was all fun and in good spirit.
Overall, AMAZING indeed and we can only recommend AMAZING to everyone.
DE
Email Tina | 50-65 years of age | Experience level: first safari
12-Day Safari in Kenia and Tanzania plus 3 Days Zanzibar
The trip was truly amazing and I would recommend AMAZING MEMORIES SAFARIS (AMS) without reservation.
I found the company's name on the website and was intrigued by its strong reviews. I did more research and obtained quotes from 2 other providers, but they could not beat the price offered by AMS.
My husband and I booked a tour that we found on the website of AMS (the "honeymoon" tour), but customised it a bit with Anne's help, covering Amboseli, Lake Naivasha, Maasai Mara, Serengeti, Ngorongoro, and Zanzibar. We corresponded with Anne exclusively via email which was easy and productive, because her responses were always prompt and very clear. Anne also picked us up from the airport in Nairobi, and her colleagues delivered two heavy suitcases to us for the return flight, which we didn't need for the safari and were able to store in the office. That was super helpful!!
The tour itself was truly amazing. We saw so many animals and were able to take spectacular pictures thanks mainly to our great guides/drivers, Kennedy in Kenia and Ikamba in Tanzania. They were great in pointing out animals at far distances which we would have never seen without them, and both were very professional and likeable at the same time.
We were also very happy with our itinerary--though if you hate long drives, I would probably stick with either Kenia or Tanzania instead of going to both.
As to the accommodations, most of the hotels and lodges (Eka hotel in Nairobi, Kibo Safari Camp in Amboseli, Mara Sopa Lodge in Maasai Mara, and Next Paradise in Zanzibar) were very comfortable with excellent food, and we really liked the experience of the tented camps in the Serengeti (Katikati and Ang'ata). Only the Crescent Camp in Lake Naivasha and (to some extent) the Rhino Lodge in Ngorongoro were a bit in need of repair, but we only spent one night in each--so it was ok.