Our Head Guide Nico and our Signature Hot Lunches
Unlimited Expeditions: The Soul of Tanzania
- Office In:
- Size:
- 10-20 employees (Founded in 2015)
- Tour Types:
- Custom mid-range & luxury tours that can start every day
- Destinations:
- Price Range:
- $150 to $400 per person per day (USD, excl. int'l flights)
for a custom tour
Your request will be sent directly to the operator
If preferred, you can contact the operator directly
Reviews
US
Email Daniel Pleasant | 50-65 years of age | Experience level: first safari
Tanzanian Safari of a Lifetime
After a lifetime of dreaming and a decade of planning, my wife and I finally took our first African safari in July/August 2018. One of the best decisions we made was selecting Soul of Tanzania to handle our week in northern Tanzania.
From our first request for information, the staff was always responsive to our many questions. Because of our time difference, I would send our questions in the evening, and could count on answers waiting in my inbox in the morning. It made planning hassle-free as we finalized our itinerary, customized the way we wanted.
We decided on an eight-day, private guided safari in Tarangire, Ngorongoro, and Serengeti, with a side trip to Olduvai Gorge and a balloon safari in the Serengeti. Soul provided us with four levels of accommodation to choose from in each area (five in the Serengeti), so to keep within our budget, we chose the most basic level, comprising Planet Lodge in Arusha, Rhino Lodge at the crater, and Ang’ata tented camps in the Serengeti. All were adequate for our needs, and Planet Lodge was outstanding.
But the element that makes or breaks your safari is the quality of your guide. Here’s where we really scored. Soul matched us up with Edward, a twelve-year guide who seemed to understand us immediately. From the first day, when we came upon a lion hunt in Tarangire, Edward had a knack for finding the animals we wanted to see, then having the patience to wait till we could get the perfect shot. He worked with us on a daily basis to come up with the program for the following day. From talking to other guests on safari, it was apparent that others weren’t having the variety and quality of sightings we were enjoying. That was all because of Edward’s superior knowledge and skill, as he found lion and cheetah cubs, not one but two leopards, and even a dik-dik (five minutes after I said I wanted to see one).
Edward was also great at producing our signature, envy-inducing hot lunches, and was a charming dinner companion to boot. Our last memory is of Edward, waving with both arms, as we took off in our small plane back to Arusha.
Kudos also to Ben in the front office for checking in periodically to make sure our safari was meeting our expectations.
We highly recommend Soul of Tanzania!
MY
Email Winson | 20-35 years of age | Experience level: first safari
Trip of lifetime -Tanzania Safari tour
We had a 7days Tanzania safari tour organized by Soul of Tanzania. It was a pleasant tour and well arrangement done by the team. Our tour guide is full of safari experience and willing to share knowledge of wildlife/animals etc. Overall food and accomodation meet our expectation. Thanks to the team and keep up the Good work !!!
Breathtaking experience in kenya and tanzania
16 days safari covering Lake Nakuru , Masai Mara, Lake Victoria, Serengeti, Ngorongoro, Tarangire and Amboseli. Amazing service. Clean well taken care cars, guides were awesome (funny and very knowledgeable). Logistics went very well. This was a very last minute tour but they were very helpful in finalizing the plan with the available accommodation options very quickly and professionally.
The safari was organized with both Soul of Tanzania (for Tanzania) and Spirit of Kenya (for Kenya) and I would not hesitate to recommend them.
KR
Email Sunny & Jin | 35-50 years of age | Experience level: first safari
incredible POA KICHIZI moments ever
We were lucky to be with Soul of Tanzania and its best guide Erasto for our first trip to Safari. Those trips can be tiring, but together we could make it fun, exciting and unique with tones of cool crazy moments! Erasto is an experienced guide who knows where to meet the incredible moments of wildlife, best 'Pole Pole' driver, good DJ and good Kiswahili teacher! We'd like to come back in the near future and then, our journey partner would be Soul of Tanzania again definitely.
BH
Email Mohamed | 20-35 years of age | Experience level: first safari
Breathtaking Experiance
From the first contact with Soul Of Tanzania I was impressed by how professional and helpful they were, that I just stopped contacting any other Safari Companies. Helena helped us in planning our trip according to our budget and giving amazing tips and advices, not sparing any effort to insure that all the planning goes smooth, even though we had so many questions on either email or Whatsapp she was always there to answer them.
As for the accommodations we were so amazed by all the ones that were suggested by her, mixing it between luxury and basic to keep it within our budget, we stayed in Manyara Wildlife Camp for day 1, the next day in Acacia Camp in Serengeti and the final night Ngorongoro Serena Safari Lodge. All had hot water and excellent food. Helena have been so sweet to even helping us in choosing hotels in Zanzibar although it was booked directly by us and not by the company.
We did a 4 days Safari Trip starting from Manyara Lake, then heading to Serengeti National Park and spending the last day in Ngorongoro crater, the whole trip was customized to our preference so we can feel how special it was from the moment we arrived at the airport. The lunches were very excellent the food always hot and tasty, you can even see other tourists looking at our table impressed by the food and set-up.
The car had a fridge and, very importantly, chargers for phones, and cameras, which is very important once you are there. Also the car was cleaned every day before the trip.
But of course what really defines the Safari Trip experience is quality of your guide. Here were we felt blessed, Heaven was extremely welcoming, friendly, professional and you can feel that he always take the extra mile to make sure our trip is pleasant. He has a good eye for the seeing animals from far away giving us the opportunity to be close to the animals before even other cars come around which was perfect for photography. His nice personality also was impressive, we had great chats over lunch or dinners and he always impressed us with his excellent singing during the long drives.
It was our first Safari Experience and thanks to Soul Of Tanzania it is memorable one and we cannot wait to repeat it again, We highly recommend Soul of Tanzania!
Safari tour in Kenya and Tanzania
I am currently working in Ethiopia and decided to do a tour covering Kenya and Tanzania in about 2 weeks. I booked with Soul of Tanzania which organized the Tanzanian leg of the tour and outsourced the Kenyan part to Spirit of kenya. All the logistics were great and no obstacles appeared.In Tanzania we had land cruisers while in Kenya we had Toyota minivans. Comfort is very similar but the landcruisers are worth the extra bucks. Both vehicles were reliable and very clean.
Both guides were amazing but my favourite was Spirit of Kenya guide. His name was Robert. It was amazing how he could spot animals camafulaged far away while concentrating on his driving. The Tanzanian guide was James and he was very professional and corteous.
Overall amazing experience and would definitely recommend!
FI
Email Jaana | 35-50 years of age | Experience level: 2-5 safaris
Perfectly organized and conducted Safari!
Our 5-day tour in Tarangire-Serengeti-Ngorongoro was pure perfection. Our driver/guide "Steven" knew all the animals and plants (not once did we hear "I don't know" from him), and told us a lot about Maasai culture and Tanzanian history as well. Also the picnic food on tours was really good, not just some stale sandwiches which others seemed to have. Accomodation during the safari was great, especially the Tarangire Sopa Lodge where the nature came to our doorstep!
CH
Email Giovanna Colangiulo | 20-35 years of age | Experience level: first safari
4 special Safari days
We made our Safari tour with Soul of Tanzania in October 2018.
Our guide was Huruma, he was really kind and he paid always attention to us.
He explained us really lots of things.
It was really a pleasure to notice that for him was not a work but really a passion to be a tour guide.
Anymore the food was always different and great.
We made just 4 days, but it was enough to see lots of different special animals.
We really suggest this tour.
Many thanks another time, Giovanna-switzerland
ES
Email Marion | 65+ years of age | Experience level: first safari
Amazing, fantastic, superb, excellent, wonderful, unforgettable, unbelievable and incredible
I always do an enormous amount of research before booking any trip and as this was my my first safari, I wanted to make sure I picked a great company.
I used the top 10 ranked companies on Trip advisor and looked at the reviews (the good and the bad), checked how recent they were and whether the companies had responded. I looked at their web sites ( if a company can't put together a decent web site - why would anyone trust them with organising a safari), eliminated those that were not based in Tanzania and ended up with 6.
I wrote a comprehensive email explaining what was important to me and containing a series of questions, sent it off to all of them and waited for the responses to come flooding in. Most were surprisingly slow to respond, but one company stood out a mile above the rest.
The wonderful, amazing, Helena from Soul of Tanzania, got in touch within 2 hours of me sending the enquiry. She had clearly read every word of my rather long note, answered all my questions and provided a wealth of information. She included a sample itinerary as a starting point but made it clear that everything could be changed/customised to suit me and offered different accommodation options (with links to their websites) for each day to suit a range of budgets . But most helpful of all was the completely transparent breakdown of the costs, so it was a piece of cake to work out where savings could be made to bring the total cost within my budget. In the end, our email thread contained over 19 messages, but as she always responded within an hour or two, the whole process from first email to final confirmation and payment, took only 3 days. The other companies I contacted didn't stand a chance!!
As my trip approached, I had other more general questions and a quick email or WhatsApp to Helena, gave me the information I needed immediately. Throughout the whole process, she made me feel like a valued, important customer - even though I had opted for a "budget" safari.
Now to the safari itself.
I was met at the airport by Azizu, who drove me to my overnight accommodation. He was warm, friendly and full of information about the area.
The next morning I was picked up by Deo, who in my humble opinion must be the best safari guide on the planet.
Over the next 7 days, Deo went out of his way, to make sure my safari experience was the best it could be and on many occasions he said if I was happy, then he was happy. He had a great sense of humour, was fun to be around and made loads of suggestions that would make life easier for me. e.g. starting our visit to the smaller lake Manyara park very early, so we would avoid the pesky and painful Tsetse flies that come out in force during the hottest part of the day.
This amazing man clearly has some sort of sixth sense when it comes to the animals. His eyesight was incredible and he could see and identify tiny little blobs, barely visible to the naked eye, but it was his ability to know where the animals were and more importantly, how they were going to behave that made it so special.
I wrote a daily blog about my safari and this excerpt from one of the posts, sums up Deo perfectly.
"By the time we arrived, the line of cars was nose to tail along the track and everyone had their binoculars and cameras pointing towards a line of palm trees that flank the river.
Deo double parked giving me a gap between the cars to look through and after giving me some directions, I found her. A beautiful cheetah walking through the grass. I'd just got the camera into focus, when Deo shouted "hang on" and sped up the track past all the cars, way past where the Cheetah was walking, turned the car to face the way we had just come and stopped at the entrance to a gully.
What on earth was he doing?
We were a fair distance from all the other vehicles, I couldn't see the cheetah any more and our previous spot had been much better. I sat down hard and pointed out this very obvious fact to Deo.
"Don't worry" he said with a grin, "she's coming this way and she's going to cross".
Even with all his experience, I have no idea how he knows these things, but by now I had supreme confidence that he knew exactly what he was doing, even if, not a single one of the other guides had followed this rather high risk strategy.
He was absolutely right of course and not only did she cross - she entered the gully right in front of us.
I was smugness personified, as all the other cars raced to our position. You can say what you like about safari guides, but the ability to anticipate the animal's movements and get you into exactly the right spot, is priceless. He is truly the best.
The cheetah made her way up the bank and walked off into the high grass. I managed to follow her ( I'm getting better at this every day) and then Deo ( who hadn't even stood up or picked up the bins) said, " she's going to get up on that termite mound". She did and I think he must have some secret communication system with the animals, because with a vast open plain in front of us, who would have guessed she would give us such an amazing photo opportunity."
As well as providing a truly outstanding guide, Soul of Tanzania offered many other small details that made a massive difference.
The Safari vehicle was clean, spacious and provided excellent viewing opportunities from every angle.
There was a 4 gang power adapter in the car, so I had no problems charging my camera batteries, laptop and phone.
The binoculars supplied were incredible ( way better than my powerful telephoto lens).
The hot lunches, served on proper plates with nice cutlery and a glass of wine, were amazing and were the envy of all the other visitors sitting there with their cardboard lunchboxes.
And finally - all the accommodation options recommended by Soul of Tanzania, exceeded my expectations by a mile, especially given my limited budget.
So in summary, I cannot recommend Soul of Tanzania highly enough. They genuinely seem to have thought of everything when it comes to providing an outstanding, first class Safari experience. So if you are planning a safari, book with Soul of Tanzania - it will be the best decision you have ever made.
BE
Email Marc Eeckhaut | 50-65 years of age | Experience level: 2-5 safaris
Super good safari-experience
Thanks to Soul of Tanzania we had the best safari-experience we could imagine!
On our 4-day “Touch of Wilderness” we visited Tarangire, Serengeti and Ngorongoro Crater, we saw 4 of the big five (except the rhino) and everything was best organized.
In the planning phase we had very good contact with Luis by email, he provided correct info about price, quality and possibilities for the accomodations and together we designed our perfect private safari.
Special thanks also to our driver/guide Edward, his very good driving and exellent knowledge of the wildlife made our stay and tour more than memorable!!!
Imagine, a tastefull lunch with a good glass of wine in the middle of the Serengeti....we will never forget...
Thank you so much for everything!!!
