The Matoke Tours Team
Matoke Tours
- Located In:
-
Netherlands
- Size:
- 20-50 employees (Founded in 2002)
- Member Of:
- ATTA, AUTO, SGR, UTB & UCF
- Tour Types:
- Custom mid-range & luxury tours that can start every day
- Destinations:
- Price Range:
- $300 to $750 per person per day (USD, excl. int'l flights)
Reviews
Email Marc Dankloff | 50-65 years of age | Experience level: 2-5 safaris
A well organised safari with special features, excellent lodges and a great guide / driver.
Matoke Tours in Uganda prepared an excellent safari package for our family. Highlights were the guided Chimp tracking, guided crater lake hike including tea plantations and village visit, a guided loin tracking tour off the beaten tracks with a Lion expert. On our game drives in Kibale, Queen Elisabeth NP, Ishasha and Bwindi we saw lots of lions, herds of elephants, an occasional leopard. Highlight of our tour was definitely the gorilla track in Bwindi, impenetrable forest, were we came eye to eye with a silverback and his family. What an amazing creatures! Further worth mentioning that we stayed at excellent safari lodges whereby Katara Lodge, Mutanda Lodge and Mihingo Lodge are worth mentioning for their good dinners and great accommodation facilities as well as their amazingly scenic locations. WMatoke provided a guide and driver Anatoli, who appeared knowledgeable about Uganda, wild life and local environment, but was above all a very pleasant chap with a great sense of humour. We laughed a lot with him and he comes well recommended for anyone who want to visit Uganda. What an amazing country and excellent safari experience.
NL
35-50 years of age | Experience level: 2-5 safaris
Excellent camping-safari to Serengeti and Ngorongoro national parks in Tanzania with Matoke Tours.
We are a family with 3 children, aged 4, 6 and 8, and booked our 4 day camping-safari to Serengeti and Ngorongo national parks + 3 extra days in Arusha with Matoke Tours. Matoke Tours was very quick in sending us a program and responding to our questions. Also prices were very reasonable! All communication was perfect.
On arrival at Kilimanjaro Airport we were picked up by our guide who brought us to our lodge in Arusha for 1 night.
After that we did a 4 days/3 nights basic camping safari to Serengeti and Ngorongoro. Everything was organised perfectly!! We had a great very experienced guide who really did his utmost best to find every animal in the parks. The children were very excited and without the guide we would not have seen at least half off all the different animals we have seen now.
Our accommodation was in tents on the public camp sites. The cook and camping-assistant always arrived with a separate feeding-car before us on the camp sites, so when we arrived the tents were set and the food prepared! Tents, sleeping gear, tables and chairs, all were very good quality. We could actually not call this basic camping :-)
After the safari we stayed 3 nights in Arusha in the Ilboru Safari Lodge which is excellent for a family!
Matoke Tours all organised it perfectly and also followed up with us after the safari if we had any feedback on the trip.
We would definitively book with Matoke Tours again and can highly recommend it.
NL
Email Nelly van Roosmalen | 65+ years of age | Experience level: over 5 safaris
It was amazing. Wonderfull land, nice people. Everything was great.
The service was very good. Nice lodges and the place from the lodges was perfect. Nice views. Good food.
We have a very nice and a good tourleader. Matoke Tours is a good touroperator.
Thanks for this nice trip.
DE
35-50 years of age | Experience level: over 5 safaris
Thank you Matoke Tours !!
We have enjoyed our 2 weeks trip through Uganda from the beginning to the end - it was perfect! We went home with memories of unforgetable moments and impressions!
CA
20-35 years of age | Experience level: 2-5 safaris
excellent, reliable,informative and professional safari group!
My father and I booked our safari through matoke tours in November/December 2014. We booked pretty last minute and changed our itinerary several times. Juma was able to accommodate our requests and changes every time and was very professional and super punctual about getting back to all my emails. Our safari in northern Tanzania was great. Our guide and driver, Gilbert was super friendly, professional. safe and could answer all of our (many) questions about everything! I would definitely recommend Matoke tours, and particularly Gilbert for any tours. We had no problems and had a wonderful safari! All the accommodation and staff at the hotels were really great as well. Thank you Matoke tours and Gilbert!
50-65 years of age | Experience level: 2-5 safaris
Very helpful, knowledgeable and great value - Uganda trip
Juma from Matoke was extremely patient and helpful providing an itinerary which met our requirements. Our driver/guide Dan was friendly and knowledgeable. Our vehicle was not top of the fleet but v sturdy and perfect for our requirements. Kibale forest camp and Entebbe airport guest house were both wonderful. Rihuja gorilla accommodation was disappointing by comparison although still clean and friendly - it just didn't have the wow factor that the others did. The gorilla tracking was amazing - I wish I could do it all over again. I have already recommended Matoke tours to two colleagues.
BE
Email Gerrit Lachaert (Nossegem, Belgium) | 50-65 years of age | Experience level: 2-5 safaris
Excellent handling by Matoke tours
This is the 2nd time we booked a trip via Matoke Tours. First was in July 2011 when we did the Mountain Gorilla Trekking in Uganda, and now in September 2014, when we made a safari trip to Selous Game Reserve and Ruaha National Park in Southern Tanzania. At both occasions, we were extremily happy with the support, administrative handling and suggestions from Matoke Tours. From the first request till end date of the tour, Matoke Tours did an excellent job. The suggested lodges/camps were top, the transport was worldclass. Nothing else to be said. We very much enjoyed the call from Matoke Tours on our arrival in Tanzania to check if all went well. I definitely recommend Matoke Tours for your travel to Uganda or Tanzania. Great service, very competitive pricing, great choices for lodging. We plan to do another safri tour in a few years with the grand-children and we sure will book via Matoke Tours.
DE
35-50 years of age | Experience level: over 5 safaris
Perfect organised safari in a wunderful Country
We booked a two weeks privat tour in Ugande with matoke. Because we have already made many Safaris in Africa, we had exact images like ours travel through Uganda should be. The communication and tips from Matoke while planning the holiday was great. Most of our wishes could be made by them. Special thanks to Anna Grodzki for good service, quick answers and always be there if we had another question.
Our driver/guide was Mussa. He was able to maneuver his Jeep trough the 'massage' roads and the wildlife in order to get us the best spots. He knows exactly the behavior of each animal, he gave us a very professional explanation and many information about live in Uganda. And ,not least, we had a lot of fun with him. Many thanks to Mussa, he did a great job! The accommodations we selected were all very good. The best of all Gorilla Safari Lodge at Bwindi Impenetrable National Park.
Only in the hotel Birds Nest at Lake Bunyonyi we have something to complain about. Here we lost our booked room and got a bad room (smale sized without a balkony) because a big group was expected. So this hotel is not recommended for individual travelers. But Matoke also tried to solve this problem so that we could change the second day in a very nice room.
All in all we can recommend Matoke as a tour Operator.
NL
50-65 years of age | Experience level: 2-5 safaris
A great once-in-a-lifetime experience
We had an even better safari than we expected. For 9 days we experienced 5 National parks and we did a village-tour and a hunting with the Bushmen. And slept in all super lodges.
It was perfectely built up. The first park (mt. Meru) he saw Giraffes, two kinds of Monkeys, zebra's en some Buffels (1)en exotic birds and the shit of elefants(2), so they where there but we didn't see. Then the next park (Tangarine) we finally saw the first elefant far away then closer and closer Meanwhile we saw the lion (3). The first lodge at the mountain Meru was beautiful but the second (Roika) was beautiful and really in the bush. We were only allowed to go to our tents (=huts) accompanied by Masaai warriors with spears ! Nights we heard all kinds of game , like Hyena's , wildebeasts, elefants and other grass-eating animals. We were in the middle of it !!
Then one day walking in the village (Mto wa Mbu ?) where we had a local meal, a kind of rice table in the middle of the locals.
Then we went to the Serengeti Park via the edge of the Ngorongoro Crater. what a beautiful journey and what a wonderful African massage (roads !!) we all had, me my wife and my daughter (12).
this is a huge park where we constantly looking for game and always saw them everywehre. Our guide Manuel, who was with us during these 10 days, was perfect. He gave us all kind of information on the animals, on the vegetation, on Tanzania and it's history and so on and he had the eye of an eagle. He saw more than the 3 of us together. And he didn't drive too fast like a lot of Jeeps do!!
Although the roads sometimes were terrible I think it should never change because you're more in the bush , more in the safari.
And at these two Parks we came across he leopard (4) and the Rhino (5). So the big five was complete.
Then one morning at 7 o'clock the thre of us went hunting whith the Bushmen and we (=they) hit a squirle and a dikdik, which we ate on the spot after making a campfire . Wow how those people live ! Primitive to the basic.
Then the last night we arrived in a the most beautiful lodge (Karama) at Arusha and we realised how quiet all the other lodges were: NO TRAFFIC ! the only sound at the other lodges was the sound of nature !
I've done a 3 days-safari about 20 years ago in Kruger Park, which impressed me already but "living for 9 days in parks really is the way to do a safari."
After this we went to Zanzibar for 5 days to rest and to process all the impressions from the days before.
Matoke tours, thanks for the impeccable organisation (and for giving us Manuel as our personal guide) and we would recommend you to anybody who would go on safari.
US
35-50 years of age | Experience level: first safari
An amazing trip from beginning to end, the gorilla tracking was an experience of a lifetime!
Matoke Tours exceeded my expectations for the gorilla tracking trip, from the driver that took us from Rwanda to Uganda, the beautiful scenery along the way to the gorilla guides and porters and the lodges we stayed in. All the people we dealt with were friendly and knowledgeable. The places we stayed in were clean and comfortable and the food at Lake Mutanda Resort was delicious! Great trip, couldn't have asked for anything better!