Rhino Explorer Tours & Safaris

Do not use this company! Terrible professionalism.

My wife and I did the 7 night wildebeest migration safari in mid-August 2019.
We were picked up at the airport and driven to Arusha to meet Daniel and asked to handover the full trip cost in cash – several thousand USD. Do not do this as if we hadn’t we would have cancelled and used another company due to issues which occurred later. I suggest you ‘pay as you go’, only pay by credit card and get a receipt. Others did this on our tour. Once we paid the money Daniel failed to answer any of our calls during the trip when we tried to inform him of the guide’s behaviour or seek his assistance. It was really unprofessional.
The first night, the guide, Malaki came to our hotel and told us he would pick us up the next day at 8am for our drive into the Serengeti. We were ready at 7.45am at reception having checked out of the hotel but Malaki did not arrive until 10.45am without bothering to answer our calls or inform us of the delay. Upon arrival Malaki informed us that he was late because the others on the tour wanted to sleep in. This caused an argument between us and the other tour members which was a disaster for starting our week long safari experience together. We later found out after bonding with the group that Malaki was in fact lying and the delay was due to the tour company not having all the equipment for the campers. This really was an awful start to the camaraderie of the group and almost ruined the holiday. One customer even left the group after this day due to having experienced the late departure twice in two days and the lies.
The second night after a long drive to the Serengeti we arrived at what Malaki said was our hotel at 7pm only for us to be told at reception that it was full. Our hotel was in fact an hour’s drive away through the pitch black wilderness and Malaki with reckless driving hit a buffalo on the way and failed to stop or show any concern. The other tour members were camping near the first hotel so it meant we lost 2 hours of safari in the morning going to collect them. I would advise that either all members of the tour either stay in a hotel or camp. As we stayed in hotels but frequently had to wait for lengthy periods of time to pack up and set up the camping equipment for others in the morning and evening which made us miss a lot of the best time for safari experiences. The organisation was very poor especially when the hotel package is very expensive.
The serengti heritage camp and kilimanjoa accommodation were really good with super staff but the rest were quite poor. The sernegeti heritage camp boss ensured we had a hot breakfast at 5.30am when all the others just gave us packed boxes. We never really got to enjoy the hotels during daylight as most of the time we were waiting for the campers to set up or pack up which again was really poor organisation. We repeatedly requested that he could drop us at the hotels whilst all the camp site activity was being done but Malaki just repeatedly ignored us and did whatever he felt like. This after spending double what the customers staying at the camp site paid.
Wildlife was great. We saw the big 5 plus wildebeest migration and a lot more. However, after a while Malaki would not wait very long for us to take in the sites or see animals that we wanted to as he had a mind of his own and was always on the phone.
On the way out of the Sernegti Malaki took us to a Masai camp of one of his friends and they tried to charge us $20 each just to visit the village. We all said no and Malaki spent the rest of the tour sulking, being grumpy and not listening to anything we requested.
At the end one of the tour one member chose to give a tip to the chef but not Malaki due to his behaviour and Malaki, due to his arrogance, started shouting at him. It was really shocking.
I really wouldn’t recommend this company. I would recommend you hire a private bus with a group of 4-6 friends/family and there were many tour companies which looked much more professional than this one.