Beast Spoor Safaris

Competitive budget prices but some money trouble

We did the budget safari 12d Kenya + Tanzania. Good value for money. Better accommodation than we expected.

Good communication before, during and after booking via WhatsApp. Good communications during the safari until there was money trouble, then harder to reach which was stressful. Make sure to get multiple numbers where you can reach them. Pesapal for deposit payment when booking worked very well.

As for reliability.. We suffered some money trouble. When we were already on our long journey to Kenya we received wishes about paying in cash which is a ridiculous amount of money. This because our tour started on a Sunday which caused some problem with banks, but they knew this for 6 months in advance. We ended up having to go extra to an ATM with them to take out as much cash as possible and pay the rest by card like we were supposed to.

Yet the worst part was that they had trouble transferring our money to the tour operator they cooperated with on the Tanzania side, and no one informed us about this until one day before heading to Serengeti the guide tells us we can't come because the money hasn't come to them. They wanted to leave us there and I had to try to mediate the communication between the companies who didn't seem to have good relations at all. Horrible stressful experience where we ended up taking a chance and desperately paying for the rest of the safari AGAIN by ourselves directly to the Tanzania tour operator. In the end the money ended up where it should and we got a refund from the Tanzania tour operator so we didn't have to pay anything extra. Allegedly this was all due to a public holiday and some kind of global transfer issues, but at least the holiday they should have planned for and done the money transfer in good time.

In general; beware of the nature of the joining safari (not special for this company), we didn't understand this before we went. Especially if you travel solo this can be good to know. It means that both the group, guide and vehicle can change everyday of the safari. The itinerary can change anytime and you rarely stay at the accommodation that you are promised in your quote. You have to be very Hakuna Matata about it.

We ended up having only one guide in each country but this seemed rare amongst the others we met (our group changed multiple times and we often stayed at different camps). We were satisfied with both Charles K in Kenya and Tony in Tanzania!

As for the tour; if I were to prioritize I would pick the following national parks: Maasai Mara, Nakuru, Amboseli, Serengeti and Ngorogoro. I would skip lake naivasha and lake manyara. If only one country I would pick Kenya and go for the three first mentioned ones!

I can recommend booking with Beast Spoor Safaris as I have faith they will learn from our money trouble and not let it happen again. However if I did it again I would book the Kenya side with them and separately book the Tanzania side with a Tanzania based tour operator.