The Wild Dog Safaris team
Wild Dog Safaris
- Located In:
- Size:
- 20-50 employees (Founded in 1997)
- Member Of:
- ATTA, NTB & TASA
- Tour Types:
- Customizable private tours and fixed group tours
- Destinations:
- Price Range:
- $110 to $1,105 per person per day (USD, excl. int'l flights)
Reviews
NL
Email Jeroen | 35-50 years of age | Experience level: 2-5 safaris
Wild Dog Safaris in Namibia is the best!
In February of this year I contacted Liz to ask her if she could organize a self drive trip for me and my colleagues. She assigned Elsie to make arrangements. I have to say we were very happy with Elsie. She is very enthusiastic, offers great service and is very thorough. During the trip she was available and even in weekends she answered our questions very quickly. The camps and hotels which were picked by Wild Dog Safaris were great. Also the cars they arranged were perfect. We did not have any problems at all. And with 3 cars on gravel roads means that the cars were well up to the job. Namibia is a fantastic country with beautiful scenes and wildlife. We had a fabulous trip! Thank you Liz and Elsie for helping us!
Email ghizela | 50-65 years of age | Experience level: 2-5 safaris
From Dust to Delta to Falls
We had such a wonderful time...starting from Namibia to canoeing though the Okavango Delta via Chobe National Park to a sweeping helicopter view of the Victoria Falls!. Wild Dog have sourced fantastic sites that provide stunning locations with great natural beauty as well as hot showers! We were all well fed and watered culminating in water water everywhere at the greatest waterfall in the world!
Wild Dog are really well organised with friendly guide/driver & cook who are always willing to go the extra mile. Not only are they knowledgeable but we also had specialist guides at practically every stop so we were really well informed & discovered a wide range of stuff we didn't expect to...you cannot imagine the myriad uses for elephant dung!
An unforgettable adventure that we will always treasure...thank you so much to one and all at Wild Dog Safaris!
35-50 years of age | Experience level: 2-5 safaris
Brilliant Company and camping trip
I joined Wild Dog Safaris in October for a tour around Namibia. It was unforgettable and had a wonderful time. The guides were excellent, and the areas visited was amazing. My favorites includes Etosha Park, Swakopmund and of course the desert. I would highly recommend Wild Dog Safaris to take care of all your travel needs when in Namibia.
65+ years of age | Experience level: first safari
A beyond wonderful experience
I am 72 and my husband 78 and both of us are very fit and healthy. We usually book one night in a country and then wander in back packer style so we wondered what an organised tour would be like. We felt this was the only option because the distances covered are vast and there are few travelers on the road and we certainly made the right choice. We did two seven day safaris to the north and south of Namibia. The guides and cooks were fantastic and served up very good vegetarian food for us especially. Everyone helped with putting up tents and the camp facilities were good and the sites where we stayed spectacular. I had read up on the country before booking and the tours covered what we wanted to see and more. Visits to cheetah and leopard parks were made interesting by having experts talk about the work they were doing although our guide was also especially well informed. The country is exquisitely beautiful with some not to be missed areas such as the Namib desert with its orange sand dunes, Fish River Canyon, and the Quiver Tree forest. The organisers were very laid back but very efficient. We had the time of our lives!
US
50-65 years of age | Experience level: over 5 safaris
Private tour Namibia
We were a group of 4 and arranged a private safari with Wild Dog. It was fabulous. Raymond was our driver and took such good care of us. We were well looked after and learned so much about the country and culture. Liz and her staff took care of every detail and need, so all we had to do was take in the sites and enjoy the incredible journey. All accomodations were great and van very comfortable. Excellant tour
BG
Email Emil | 20-35 years of age | Experience level: first safari
Best experience ever !!!
What a trip !?!?!? One of best things I have ever done. Wild Dog Safaris made my Dad's dreams come true. They are such an amazing team and our communication with them was so easy. Every single detail was done with such a professionalism and with so much passion. If you are planning any trips in Namibia or outside Namibia consider that Wild Dog Safaris are the best.
We did the 10 day Namibian explorer with them and I have to say that it was an amazing trip. Our guides did the impossible to satisfy all our requests. We were pampered like little children.
I wanted to surprise my dad with boat fishing and they organized everything within couple of minutes. It was another lifetime experience.
Congratulations to all of members of Wild Dog Safaris !!!
You made me feel like I am at home.
US
Email lisa curran | 35-50 years of age | Experience level: first safari
amazing, great value
An incredible 3 weeks that I will never forget: 19 day combination tour. This is a budget safari offer...no champagne or fluffy bathrobes -- exactly what I was looking for. Three weeks on the road, mostly one-night stays in each place, seeing incredible sights, incredible wild life. We opted for the accommodated version (most meals with the group on the road and at the campsites) -- accommodations were mostly awesome (one dud, but let's face it... options are limited in some areas). Food was good and tasty... but again, I'm here for safari, not 5-star meals.
We camped two nights. Equipment was perfectly fine... easy to set up, take down, comfortable.
Best: itinerary, wild life, fellow travelers
Least: We were the only ones who were accommodated/in lodges, so there were some disconnnects. But they are fixing that -- 2017 tours will be either all campers or all accommodated.
Visited August 2016
Email Bruno | 50-65 years of age | Experience level: 2-5 safaris
Fantastic holidays in an incredibly beautiful country
I am a solo traveler and I have just returned from a 3-week holiday in Namibia, including a few days in Botswana, finishing at the Victoria falls. The trip was organised by wild dog-safaris based in Windhoek and I must say it was my best holiday ever. Namibia is a stunningly beautiful country, so beautiful it is almost impossible to describe.
The first part of my trip consisted of the 7-day Southern swing group tour which was nice and relaxed. Our guide Marcus was very knowledgeable about his country, very friendly, always ready to answer questions and an excellent safe driver. Alfeus his assistant was a great cook and the food was excellent and plentiful. My fellow travellers and I were given ample time to enjoy the scenery, taking photos and at no time did we feel rushed to move along. It was my first ever group tour and I must say that I thoroughly enjoyed the experience.
The second part of my trip was a 2 week self-driving tailored tour. At the planning stage, all my emails to wild dog safaris were answered within 24 hours. The tour was perfectly organised; I was met by Lucinda who gave me all the appropriate documentation, detailed map and accommodation vouchers. All I had to do was to follow the itinerary and enjoy myself.
I will definitely be returning to Namibia; it is such a beautiful and vast country that it is worth a few visits
Wild dog safari stop at nothing to ensure you have the time of your life, big thumb up
FR
Email Iain | 65+ years of age | Experience level: first safari
unforgettable, fascinating, wonderful - 15-day delta and dunes.
We had never been on a safari before, so we made sure that we did as much research before we booked as possible. Wild Dog Safaris came with personal recommendations, and, after reading many reviews, we took the plunge - and we were not in any way disappointed. It was the most memorable trip that could be imagined - between us, we took over 2,500 photos and snippets of video, we saw all the animals we could have wanted... and so on! There were only three of us on this particular safari, so it made it all feel rather more personal than it might have done in a large group, but we still think it would have been fantastic.
1. Highlights: there are too many, but the three nights in the Okavango delta stand out, the punting through the reeds, the close encounters with hippos, the peace and tranquility of the scenery, the expertise and friendliness of the local mokuru canoe polers. Also the three nights in Etosha will live long in the memory, the elephants at the waterhole, the rhino crossing the road barely twenty yards in front of us, the herds of zebra, antelopes of various kinds, wildebeest, the birds, tawny and fish eagles, kori bustards, ostrich, to mention only three - we are still dazzled by their beauty and variety.
2. The Wild Dog Staff. If you get a chance, ask for Sam and Stevie as your driver/guide and cook respectively. They were amazing - always ready to help, always on hand, knowledgeable beyond our wildest expectations, and providers of super food, no matter what the shops did not have on their shelves! They were simply brilliant. We actually felt sorry for Sam, driving long hours on gravel roads that jarred your arms out of their sockets and made your teeth rattle for hours afterwards, but no matter how tired he must have been, he always was there to help if we needed it.
3.The accommodation. We had the sense, as it turned out, to ask for two camping mattresses each, and we were very glad we did so, as some of the sites were rather rocky. The tents were fine, in need, if truth be told, of replacement (there were holes in the mosquito net windows - with the inevitable consequences, there were holes in the rip-stop nylon - with identical consequences, and one or two of the window zips did not work, but that was no important. The groundsheets were in perfect order, and, for all the rain we had, we were absolutely dry inside, so the purchase and use of a aerosol can of "Doom" was a very minor (and short-lived) irritation!
4. The campsites. The three days of hotel in Swakopmund were very welcome, of course, but the campsites were generally very acceptable in what they offered. True, two of them had no water for a period of time (in one, my wife had to go to the bar to tell them, as I was in the shower!, and at the second, there was no running water of any kind for about 12 hours), but they were all very different and offered different experiences. They all had a bar and a shop with varying wares for sale, and the sanitary blocks were always clean (though remember to bring your own soap and loo paper). Some had a swimming pool though the colour of the water was frequently rather intimidating. Of the sites we visited, Guma and n'Kwazé were the most attractive, memorable and best organised, and perhaps Madisa the least.
5. The food. Stevie's organisation of the food came from years of experience. He bought what he could from the various shops we stopped at, and created lasagne, lamb stew, stroganoff, chicken schnitzels, kudu steak (because we expressed an interest in trying it) and so on - no two meals were the same, and none were less delicious than any other. Breakfast was usually cereal, yoghourt and coffee, but it had to be quick because we were usually on the road by 07.00, or earlier if we were going on a game drive. Picnic lunches were usually things like meat or sausage with salad and a roll, or bacon and scrambled egg if there was time.
6. The vehicle. We were in a Toyota LandCruiser, which was ideal. We could all see what we wanted to see, we could store our belongings easily along with the sleeping bags (which we hardly needed!), and the trailer took everything else. The LandCruiser had a lifting top which we all used to see the wildlife and take photos. Of course, when you are in a vehicle for 500kms of very uneven gravel road, you get a bit sore, but the stops were well-judged and just long enough for us to check we still had arms and teeth! The roads in Botswana we infinitely worse that the roads in Namibia (we lost the trailer at one point, through simply appalling surfaces (or the lack of them to be more precise), with pot holes you could bury someone in and no-one would notice!
7. The excursions. All of them absolutely fascinating. Apart from the game drives (which we found quite incredible), the highlights were possible the 5,000year-old rock carvings at Twyfelfontein (a UNESCO World heritage site), and the ride through the dunes just outside Swakopmund -an optional extra, but well worth the money, where the colours and the views are not to be missed. Again, the planning of the activities had been very carefully thought out, and was very successful.
8. Recommendations. There is nothing you can do about the distances covered or the state of the roads, so let's leave that out of it. However, regarding the driving, may we suggest that you give the mobile phone to the assistant/cook, and not to the driver - not only in case the police see the driver using it, but because the driver needs full concentration on some of the roads! The only other small thing related to the tents - you may want to look at them, with a view to replacing some of them fairly soon. But we are not going to take umbrage with the tents, as I said earlier.
Conclusions. We would whole-heartedly recommend this camping safari. You have to be prepared for camping and for roughing it a little, and to help with things like washing up, setting up and taking the tents down, but these aspects make the experience all the richer it - we are delighted we chose WDS, a wonderful, fascinating and enriching experience.
Make sure you read all the details of the trip, and you look carefully at the hints and tips that various people have written about going on safari - make sure, for example, that you take anti-malarial medication with you as well as the other jabs which are recommended - and you will have the trip of your lives.
Email John | 35-50 years of age | Experience level: 2-5 safaris
Delicious vegan food and friendly staff
I was grateful to once again be provided with vegan meals for a trip I did with Wild Dogs Safaris. On my 9 day trip I had some tasty meals prepared by our cook Joseph. The quantity and quality was great. Our tour guide Jason was also excellent in being not only knowledgeable but also approachable for any questions we had.