Fig Tree Tours and Travel

Unprofessional as they did not follow the agreed plan

I have contacted Fig Tree for the positive reviews and for the reasonable prices, though, I did not have a good experience for a number of reasons. First of all I was given a program and ended up doing another! So a piece of advise, make sure you are very specific on your requirements, making plenty of research and you get a program confirmed in writing exactly as you have understood it and you want it. I have asked for a 5 nights budget camping safari with 3 nights inside the parks (2 in serengeti and 1 in Ngorongoro) and I got instead a 5 nights with only 2 days inside the parks (1 in serengeti and 1 in Ngorongoro) I never asked to go to Tarangine and we found ourselves spending the first day there instead of Serengeti and slept outside the park. Serengeti is big, if you do not spend at least 2 nights inside you waste a lot of time traveling between parks and you don’t enjoy much time game viewing! In fact out of so called 5 days in reality you do 4 days of which 1.5 days game viewing and the rest is traveling or waiting). Second of all you need to know if you are going with the actual company car and driver for the whole trip or not. In our case they just gave us a freelancer driver with other people from other agencies, sometimes they do this in case they don’t find enough people to fill the car and they don’t have drivers available. Funny enough we were 6 people coming from different agencies and we all had the same program but ended up doing another one. Or we were all stupid or it is common for agencies to be unclear and unprofessional. We got 2 different drivers in 3 days while another couple which stayed longer got 3 drivers in 4 days ending up wasting time and therefore money (we got delayed a couple of times during the trip for missing payments from the company to the driver, literally 2 hours waiting!). Third of all you need to make sure you clarify in advance the amount of tips to give to the staff; we were told we had to give 10 usd per day per person to the driver but we ended up having to give tips also to the cooker, which was not expected. Ref. Tips it would be much better for the company to pay for the drivers and cookers and include that amount in the overall price! It would avoid misunderstandings and uncomfortable situations and leave the customers choosing if a tip is worth to be given (tips should not be forced!). Fourth of all, be aware of the extremely bad conditions of the public camp sites, overcrowded with dirty facilities! I have been camping several times in Zimbabwe and other places and the experience of the camping is incredible, you are immersed in nature, hearing the animals around you after a nice meal cooked on the fire. In Tanzania the experience is far from this; I have never experienced such crowded camps and you loose completely the connection with nature (if you are in a safari for this reason!). You will only hear people talking, and more, all night and no sound of animal! Also, be aware of the commercialization of the safari and expect many cars around; if you are sensitive about animals conservation it can be quite overwhelming seeing how many cars can surround a lion surely disturbing them... Our driver was old school and very sensitive about this matter which I have appreciated. After all I could not recommend this company as after the trip and discussing the program issue they are still insisting they did nothing wrong. And note I have confirmation in writing of the 3 nights camping from them! Literally unprofessional.