Widman Tours & Safari

Mistakes and delays, very bad experience

As an intro, I’d like to mention this is a copy paste of my comment on trip advisor.

I am not surprised after coming back from our trip there, to see the previous comment « Unprofessional experience », as it is exactly what we just lived too.

We chose the 2 days « memorable safari », between Tarangire and Ngorongoro.

On our first day, 30min delays at our hotel, and guide not reachable, you start to wonder if you haven’t just been scammed.
Then apparently out of nowhere, Widman was expecting us to have to full amount in cash to pay on the day for the parks entrance fees, even after our 10% deposit on his bank account, so we went withdrawing to our limit around 850$ in Tanzanian Shillings (TZS, their currency)
Then you’re supposed to wait for the lunch boxes somewhere but the guy did not show up so you go somewhere else and again you wait. While waiting, the guide is paying for Tarangire entrance, in US dollars ! So actually they had the money.. anyway we are nice people and decide to focus on the trip ahead.

That being said, we enter the park at 11:50 ! After leaving at 8 our hotel in Arusha. Maps says 3h drive, so we were (departure supposed to be 7:30), more than a good hour late.

Rest of the day goes quite normal in the park, even though another group saw a family of lions that we did not.

We reach our lodge at 7pm, not the one advised on the website, price half cheaper according to booking but we paid everything now so.. diner is at 7:30, so not much to relax, but people and food were nice though so ok we’ll see afterwards our overall satisfaction before complaining.

The next day, we are asked to be ready at 7 am, even though Ngorongoro is not far away from Karatu (our lodge city), to go pay for the Ngorongoro entrance, as it did not work the day before !

Then the mess begins :

We skip the breakfast, but have to wait the bank opening at 8, so we take breakfast, I am asked to help and try paying online about 450$ to enter there and there refund me, but it does not work (see our good faith again), so we go to the bank, it finally opens at 8:30, we wait, our guide goes to pay, we wait about 40min in the car, getting harassed by locals wanting to sell their objects, we finally are able to go there but the guide is feeling « dizzy » so we get one of his friends to pass the local police check (small doubts about legal but well..), we get to the gate late but surprise, paiement is not accepted yet because of a network issue, so we wait until 10:45 to go through, and after a bit less than 1h drive get into the crater around 11:30 ! And we were ready at 7 ! (1h drive for maps)

It’s not done, we enter the crater, and after 1h inside the car stops, technical issue, we cannot continue, it’s 12:30.
I did not mention above that on the first day we already realised that no gauge in the car was working, so not speed indicator, no fuel indicator since the beginning, all cars were overtaking us whenever a 50km/h limit panel was there as our guide did not know his own speed and went slower.

From there we wait 1h expecting our guide to find a solution and thank god a car with french people inside was nice enough to take us back for almost finishing the tour (1 small hour as they were on the way back). So we get out of the crater, after spending total 2h inside, only 1 with Widmans car.
Then our guide had paid for a bus to take us back to our hotel on the second day before our going back, even there, the price doubled when the bus arrived and we’ve been asked to help, to which we said no and the other company « Simba » actually paid for our return (they had to arrange themselves). It’s the least they had to do.

Now for two days we’ve been asking for a partial refund, explaining all this to Widman, and he only accepts to give 100$ back and begging for us not to post our experience, but that is clearly not enough for us.

So overall, delays, mistakes, very unprofessional people, and bad experience.

Not saying that the previous comments are false, but I imagine Widman is getting bigger with new guides and experiences, but he clearly does not know how run his business correctly. From other feedbacks on Tanzania, other companies were much more prepared and experiences were fantastic, so we strongly encourage anyone to look at other companies.