Mercy Yetu Safaris

Awful operating company, amazing tour guide

Let me start on the safari guide that took us around, Mike from Karava Brothers Safari. Absolutely amazing, his knowledge on animals was insane, he found cheetahs, lions and other amazing animals on his own without the use of the radio and utilised the radio to help us see every animal available. A lovely man who I cannot recommend highly enough, I will give his details to friends and family.

However, the safari operator whom I dealt with was appalling. My communication with Mercy Yetu Safaris began months before and we had an itenary arranged and paid for 6 months prior. A week before going away I informed the company where we were staying and got no reply for a couple of days. This was very unusual so I did a bit of research and found their website was out of use, and their page on the safari comparison company was out of use. None of the numbers given were working and there was no reply to any emails. I called the safari comparison site whom I found them on who emailed them. All of a sudden I got a reply to my emails with the Mercy Yetu claiming they'd gone into their spam, very convenient when I was getting replies daily a couple of months prior. The days before my safari were a complete stress as it had appeared the company had forgotten about my safari which was confirmed when I found out they had booked everything 3 days prior to our arrival despite us booking months in advance. I thought the trouble would end on our arrival however it continued. We had paid for flights and the company weren't sending us out tickets, after an absolute slog of back and forths we eventually managed to get the tickets late at night when we had a flight at 8am, shocking. Finally I thought this was the end of the stress but again, the return flight which we'd paid for experienced the same issues with the company not sending us the email with the booking code making check in impossible, a couple of hours before the flight I was sent the code by WhatsApp to end what was supposed to be a good day but turned into a stressful day due to Mercy Yetu's incompetence and lack organisation. To make matters even worse a couple of days before the end of the safari, despite being told we would be with our guide until day 7 we were merged with another group and said goodbye to our guide whom we had built such a bond with, we were told we had to pay $300 to keep him despite being told we'd have him till the last, they claimed it was because they were over budget, again lack of organisation.

I would strongly advise against anyone booking with this company to avoid the stressed we went through