Hekima Safaris

Nice safari experience, with an organisation that has room for improvement.

My partner and I thoroughly enjoyed this safari experience. We had a fun group (us and 4 others we did not know beforehand), and each national park visit was breathtaking in its own way. The organisation was adequate in some regards, but did fall short in some others.

- Our guide knew his way around the parks, and managed to make sure we saw a ton of different animals. He answered our questions but did not take a lot of initiative to give us explanations about the animals/areas we saw. He was enthousiastic and playful at times, but overall did not seem very interested in getting 'connected' with the group, with an attitude that can be best described as nonchalant: not to a problematic extent, but not very involved. Adequate, but not great.
- The camping experience was quite adventurous. The tents were ok, but it was not possible to really secure them into the ground. During a storm at night, this lead to some panic with someone's tent flying around the campsite (that had a large number of jackal and hyena visitors). Nobody got hurt in the end, but several people of the group were (understandably) scared out of their minds throughout this all, yet our guide did not seem to care very much and did not give an impression of being committed to helping out, and to keeping the group safe and at ease. "Just keep sleeping" is not an appropriate response if a scared person asks what to do incase a hyena manages to enter your tent at night.
- The food tasted good, but the way it was stored was often quite unhygienic. Of course, while on a safari adventure in Africa you need to have realistic expectations about this, but there's a minimum of effort you would expect a cook to make regarding hygiene and ours didn't always do that. The best example: the fruit and vegetables that we were to eat later on were lying on the ground in the camping site kitchen, with rats and birds running rampant through them. We suggested to the cook to put this food in a box (the least you can do to keep it protected a little better) and helped him do it, just to find the food lying around on the dirty ground again the next day for no apparent reason (once again between the rats and birds).
- On the fourth day of the trip, we were told the plan was to visit the Ngorongoro crater for just +-3 hours and then leave by noon, even though our park entry pass allowed us to stay in the park until much later. The group needed to do some negotiating with the guide to keep us in the park for the maximum amount of time. In the end we had a great day there (and after talking about all this, our guide did put in a much better overall effort in Ngorongoro), but that does not change the fact that that day would have been cut inexplicably short had it not been for the group intervening.
- The Hekima House, were we stayed our last night of the trip, was ok overall but our room was quite unclean. The food, bathroom and staff were nice though.

In the end we got the impression that the organisation was receptive to our feedback and willing to improve, which is definitely a positive aspect worth mentioning. We believe Hekima is a young organisation capable of giving many people great safari experiences in the future, but also that they need to improve in the aspects mentioned above. Even though these things did not ruin the entire experience for us, they very well might for other travelers.

About the parks:
- Tarangire: various types of vegetation, many hilly parts so beautiful viewpoints, lots of animals.
- Serengeti: more flat open spaces, less vegetation, many animals yet more spread out from each other, lots and lots of lions.
- Ngorongoro: unbelievable setting, many different animals close together in a breathtaking volcanic creater, no doubt the highlight of our trip.
- Lake Duluti: definitely not a 'safari' day, more of a relaxing experience on the last day, enjoying some peace and quiet (and birds). A nice day but not comparable to the true safari experiences in Tarangire, Serengeti & Ngorongoro.