Motorbike Adventure Travel

Be Careful with this tour operator

First of all Tanzania is a wonderful country, the people are great, and the animals are amazing.

About the tour operator. It appears that the owner Alpha made this great website offering tours but that's about as far as it goes. Alpha lives in Australia, not Tanzania, and wasn't there for the tour...

The motorcycles are old Honda 250's, the bike I was given was a 1991, twenty seven (27) years old. No horn, no speedo, but to Honda's credit the bike ran fine with only one break down in 7 days. When you're riding a motorcycle you need a horn, its dangerous not to have one. I complained, they fixed it but it stopped working a day later. The other bikes didn't appear to have horns either...

When we arrived Alpha was not there. We were met by his "associate" who picked us up at the airport and then dropped us off at the hotel saying someone would meet us there in the morning. The next morning we met Kalifa and David. There wasn't really any instruction or pre trip discussions about roads, hazards, hand signals, what to be careful of etc just hop on an go (David the lead rider, didn't speak english).

In retrospect the disaster that happened on the second day might have been avoided if the operators had talked a bit about the trip prior to setting off.

What happened is one of our party drove over a small road bump, wasn't paying attention and crashed at a low speed. He fell on his ankle and broke it, a freak accident but it ruined his trip. I know it was his fault but I think the operators should have emphasized to watch out for these sort of things. At least two other times we came over a rises in the road to find that the road was washed out. Numerous times there could have been horrible crashes. There was no warning from the lead rider David...

On that note, If you get hurt in this country you have a real problem. Seeing what happened to my friend with a broken leg opened our eyes to the level of medical attention in this area. In this area the hospitals are basically just clinics with limited resources.

If you are seriously hurt they have to get you on a plane to fly you out. Getting that plane can take hours... If you suffer an internal injury you could die waiting for medical attention. Subsequently you'd think that the operators would display a high level of safety... nope. If you take this tour make sure you bring pain pills in case you are hurt otherwise you will suffer as there is no pharmacy close by. (Tanzania for the most part is a third world county).

Having ridden motorcycles and dirt bikes (I'm 60 years old) for many years my understanding is the tour operator riding out front ( the lead rider) is responsible for leading the way and pointing out hazards to the clients. There was none of this.

Also the front rider tour operator constantly placed himself in front of me so that I was constantly covered with his dust. I complained twice but he just keep riding there, when I tried to pass he just accelerated. Finally I got him to back off and stop spraying me with his dust but I ended up with an eye and nose infection from the constant dust at the end of the trip.

We had 7 days riding and then got into a truck for a safari through the Serengeti. When we got to the park gates, the guy driving the truck (who had been subcontracted from Alpha) didn't have the money for the entrance fee, nor did the credit card that was given to him work. I had to pay the 475 dollar US fee.

They promised to pay me back when we got to town at the end of the trip, didn't happen. They promised to email me the payment by the end of the week, didn't happen. As of 7 weeks after the tour Alpha is paying me about 100 dollars every 2 weeks, and I am still owned a couple hundred dollars at this point. Having paid Alpha $4,800 US Dollars for this trip this is unacceptable.

I understand how things can happen, but when you make a mistake you should fix it and act responsibly. If I didn't harass this operator I don't believe he would have ever paid me anything.

The drivers, Mohammed, Kalifa and David were all nice, professional but I think they could use some feed back from the owner who is just absent. They should make the effort to stop every once in a while to explain to clients about the area and points of interest. I think these 3 guys did an ok job but the owner should give them more instruction, or the owner should be there...

Use caution with this operator