Mousebird Safaris Expert
Mousebird Safaris
- Located In:
- Size:
- 5-10 employees (Founded in 2020)
- Member Of:
- IATA, TATO & TALA
- Tour Types:
- Custom budget & mid-range tours that can start every day
- Destinations:
- Price Range:
- $180 to $460 per person per day (USD, excl. int'l flights)
Reviews
Email Libby | 35-50 years of age | Experience level: 2-5 safaris
The worst organisation of any company I've ever worked with
First of all, we booked a shared safari with Mousebird safaris, and we ended up joining a convoy of around 6 safari vehicles, each with 6-7 people in them, with unmarked or or unmarketed cars (I.e. they didn't have the mousebird logos on them). After speaking to several people in our tour, we realised that every couple or individual had booked with a separate and different safari agent. And we were brought together to join this trip.
This meant that almost everyone on the trip were staying in different places. This lead to us being picked up very early every day and taken to a meeting destination, often to wait for several hours before starting the actual safari, and spending much less time enjoying the nice lodges we had booked to stay at. (The meeting places were often very basic and not that nice to hang out in). The same was true for the evening, we would drive around after the safari ended, often for several hours, to drop people at their respective lodges.
The major consequence of this (not even considering all the time we wasted just waiting) was that almost every day, after collecting people and waiting for those camping to pack up, we only ever started our safaris at around 9 or sometimes even later. A far cry from the stated "dawn/sunrise safari" we expected.
We also never did any night or evening safaris, or any safari walks, which I have done on other safaris around Africa. Overall it was very poorly planned.
The drivers didn't even know where we were supposed to be staying half of the time, and we had to tell them, or keep an eye on Google maps to make sure they didn't go the wrong way. We were taken to the wrong lodge 3 times on our trip. Which was very tiring in the end. And during the drives to and from the lodges, it was not so easy to look for animals, as almost all the drivers had clearly learned to drive by playing GTA (they drove INSANELY fast and recklessly).
Speaking of driving, since we were driving in a convoy, there were over 10 occasions where one of our party (including our car at least 3 times), got severely stuck in the mud and/or potholes, and in some cases it took over an hour to get the car free. All the time we were all just waiting, with no wildlife nearby. We didn't see any other safari jeeps get stuck the whole time, only our group, which led us to believe that our drivers were not so experienced or trained in driving the terrain.
The days were very long, and we had no snacks or suitable lunches provided either. We are both vegan and booked this trip because the description said caters for vegan. We were told on booking it would be "easy". Most days we were picked up at 6-7am, waited around til about 9.30am to start, but only stopped for lunch around 2-3pm. And on every day we were there, we were given something non-vegan. Or there were minimal options for us. For instance the group would get meat, rice and some steamed veg. So for us, it was just the veg (usually just green beans and carrot) and some mildly warm rice, which just felt like they didnt even think about us at all. And we never stopped anywhere to get any snacks.
One day they almost didn't provide us with any water, but after a long argument, the driver finally took us to a shop and suggested we buy it ourselves... despite "free unlimited water" being written in all the contracts. We didn't agree and eventually, the driver got us water.
To top it all off, the contact we were speaking to before leaving specifically asked us to bring cash to do a final payment to "pay for some in tour activities", such as national park entrance fees etc. So we paid half on card in advance and brought the rest in cash as agreed. But the night before the safari, the organiser came to out hotel to take the cash and we never saw him again. So it mustn't have been for the entrance fees, in fact we never saw our driver exchange cash with anyone once, we believe it was just so we would pay them in cash instead.
I would not go with this safari company again, even if you paid me, as the hours wasted waiting have aged me by a decade.
NL
Email Kate | 35-50 years of age | Experience level: over 5 safaris
Had to report to police. Buyer beware.
To cut a long story short, the driver, who was subcontracted by Mousebird Safaris Mr. Lema, one night of 4 took us to the wrong hotel upon instructions of Mousebird Safaris. He was then not able to take us to the correct hotel (Ascertained after he called his boss) due to the park closing and him not wanting to as it was 1.5 hours away and he "would not have taken this job on had he known this before" (quote from driver.) Upshot was that we had to pay 350 USD on TOP of what we had already paid because the driver would/could not take us to the hotel Mousebird had booked. We called the owner at Mousebird several times and he did not pick up. All my messages were, funnily enough, ignored.
After this, I had wanted Mousebird to settle this directly with the driver who had paid the new (and horrible) hotel, but the driver strongarmed us to his office and forced us to pay his boss for this 350 Dollar hotel he had taken us to in error. Mousebird Safaris Mr. Lema is refusing to pay us back. We have reported it to the police and a case against Mousebird Safari is ongoing.
Mousebird basically contracts their services to a driver who is working for several agencies so you constantly have to wait until others have been picked up from other agencies. Our driver from a firm called Avocet Safaris Tanzania, was picking up several people and messed up this trip entirely. The whole thing was an organisational mess.
I would never ever recommend Mousebird Safaris as I believe that they are not honest. We will see Mr. Lema from Mousebird Safaris in court.