Kilisa Tours & Safaris

Kilisa Tours and Safaris should be avoided!

I had a horrible experience with Kilisa Tours and Safaris. Originally I had booked with them because they had received such positive reviews from Trip Advisor. They also offered cheap prices and I decided to go on a safari with them, but I am glad that I didn't book with them to do Kilimanjaro otherwise they would have definitely botched it up.

Twelve days before my trip, they informed me via email that my hotel was changed from Moshi to Arusha and that the tour group decided to start a day earlier. I had been doing Mt. Meru and Kilimanjaro so I had no email access, and went to the hotel that they booked me in Moshi. I was told that I was booked for Moshi by Kilisa tours, but there was not room for me and I had to go to another hotel.

After Naick was told, he tried to tell me I should have gotten the email and I explained that I had no Internet access since I came to Africa. I was tired after my 8 day Kilimanjaro trip, and he claimed that the Lemosho route that I had done should have finished at 5AM. That isn't true as I didn't finish until 2PM that day with another group as we went back to the gate, and then had lunch before I was dropped off to my hotel.

So instead of staying at the Key's Hotel, in Moshi (which I was originally told) and had a high standard, I was booked to stay in Arusha Centre Inn in Arusha which is a much lower caliber hotel. However, I was not told this, and the price that I paid for the safari did not change.

I was also asked if I brought $875 in cash to pay for the trip. I had not been informed via email to do this, and asked if I could pay by credit card. Instead, I was told that to avoid a surcharge, I would pay for the park admission which would total $875. I was not told that I would be paying for the park admission of the other people on the tour and my tour guide.

I was not told that the safari was going to be with other people and it was thru another company that wasn't associated with Kilisa. I thought all of these other tourists were from Kilisa tours. I was driven to Lake Manyara to catch the tour group on their second day of the safari since I had missed the first day.

They were staying at the Sunbright campsite which offered a cabin. I was given a cabin initially, but when two people in my group complained that they had a cabin before, but were then designated to stay in a tent, the manager asked me to move to the tent and to give the two people the cabin. I was sick and had a cough (after finishing my Kilimanjaro trip) and despite that these two people paid less than me, I had to move.

For the next 2 days I ended up sharing a tent with 2 other people on the trip that I didn't know.

When I went to pay at one of the park gates, I was told to pay $10 more than Kilisa had informed me. Although that shouldn't be a big deal, I did not like how the driver had forced me to just pay, and not question it. I was angry and said that at the next park gate, I would pay $10 less so that I would not be overcharged. The driver did not like that and insisted that I pay what I was told to pay.

On the last day, at 9:40AM at Ngorongoro Crater, our safari car had broken down. Our driver called his friend to pick us up and take us back for brunch at 11AM. The friend just drove us back to our campsite and we didn't do anymore sight-seeing. Then when the driver got back with the safari car repaired, we had to be driven back to Arusha and end the trip.

I asked for a refund as I paid for 4 days for the safari, and on the last day, since the safari car broke down, we could not explore Ngrongoro Crater much at all. I brought this up to Naick who tried to claim that the second safari car had taken us around Ngorongoro but I insisted that it only drove us back to the camp site. Then Naick said that the blame was actually for this man from another company who actually run the trip, and that man refused to refund me saying no one had ever complained about the trip.

At the end of the day, I wish that I hadn't booked with Kilisa as there were these screw ups with the hotel and also having a cheap safari car that broke down. Also, since the safari car was overloaded with 5-6 passengers (sometimes with the cook too) and luggage, I did not get to see the animals properly nor take as good pictures as I expected to.

Stay away from this company!