IN
35-50 years of age | Experience level: over 5 safaris
Review about Ngorongoro Crater by Matrishva Vyas
As a photographer, this is a good destination if you are interested in "Wildscape".
For the first timers it is a must go destination.
Rhino sighting is the attraction but you can photograph it nicely only if they come roadside.
Second time you may skip it.
NL
35-50 years of age | Experience level: over 5 safaris
Top vacation
Booked with Kikwetu shortly before leaving to Kenya. They could organize the trip according to our wishes. Livingstone was our guide in Kenya. He really showed knowledge about wildlife and did his level best to show us the big 5 and more. In Tanzania we had a mismatch with the first guide, but it was quickly solved by Kikwetu. Peter was an excellent tour guide who i would recommend to anyone going to Tanzania. The tented camps in Tanzania are of a bit lower standard then the ones in Kenya, but very exciting to wake up during the night due to the sound of hyena's or lions.
50-65 years of age | Experience level: over 5 safaris
Review about Okonjima Nature Reserve by Kaku
It was good for private nature reserve and it is understandable that they need a fence but it is a little disturbing if you compare to national parks.
US
35-50 years of age | Experience level: first safari
10 days/11 nights -- great private tour package!
As this was my first safari, I wasn’t sure what to plan and Lilac Adventures was a big help. I worked with Daniel (over a hundred emails) for more than 3 months to work out details of our 10 nights in Botswana, Zimbabwe and South Africa! Daniel and his team responded to every email and answered all of my questions.
This was a girl’s trip and we both very much enjoyed it. The 10 nights/11 days was the perfect amount of time (although I would have loved longer) to experience the 3 countries. All lodges, game drives and transfer companies were great!
Our tour package for the most part was good with only a few minor issues. We were missing some information that should have been provided ahead of time (transfer times and tour/transfer company names) so we needed to contact Lilac Adventures almost daily to confirm. Also there seemed to be confusion of our arrangements at each lodge. We paid for ‘private tours’ and some lodges had us with groups. Even though the issues were resolved by each lodge, my expectation of hiring Lilac Adventures was to avoid this confusion and that everything was prearranged correctly.
I would recommend Lilac Adventures, but encourage all details be provided prior to the start of your journey to avoid any worry or confusion while on your trip.
NL
20-35 years of age | Experience level: 2-5 safaris
Great safari that exceeded our expectations
Mega Adventures organised a great safari for us; 4 days, 3 nights to Serengeti and the Ngorongoro Crater. Part of the programme was to follow the great migration, for which we went all the way to the northern edge of the Serengeti. Views were spectacular, with wildebeests everywhere you looked. During the safari, we saw many animals, including the lion and elephant (close distance), rhino (in Ngorongoro crater), hyenas, almost every animal you would hope to see.
As we opted for the budget safari, we camped in little tents. This was quite exciting, as there are no fences around the campsite. During our last night, we saw some zebras at the camping site. The quality of the meals was fine (the fact that I eat vegetarian was no problem). The tour guides were knowledgeable. The schedule was pretty tight; going all the way up northern Serengeti takes a lot of time. We often felt that we were in a rush, not allowing us to spend as much time watching animals as we would like. However, since the guide (Ibrahim) often decided that we had to move on, we saw probably more animals (and better views) than we would have if we would have taken it easy. He knew very well to set priorities, searching for the most spectacular scenes.
Initially, the Maasai cultural interaction was included in our itinerary, but it turned out that we did not have enough time to do this. However, I was glad that we took as much time as possible for game viewing.
Altogether a very good experience and well organised. Another major advantage of booking with Mega Adventures is that they did an effort combining groups (which is why they could offer a competitive price) - perfect for individuals searching for a group to join.
FI
50-65 years of age | Experience level: over 5 safaris
Review about Mahale Mountains National Park by Rudiger Schultz
The Park is excellent as is its wildlife and nature. The standard accommodation there is not overwhelming but all in all I rate the price-quality-relation as satisfying.
NO
35-50 years of age | Experience level: first safari
Safari in Tanzania
I was in Tanzania for the month of July for the first time and I went on Safari to Ngorongoro, Serengeti and Manyara national park. It was so lovely, the tour guide from Global insight Safari was great, we saw majority of the animals that were looking forward to see. Ngorongoro, was the climax of our safari as we were able to experience unique and untouched ecosystem of the park. This is something one has a to experience at least once in a life time. Thanks to Global Insight team for making our safari memorable.
CH
20-35 years of age | Experience level: first safari
Basically a well-organized safari, but tour description was not correct
We were a bit late to book the safari tour, but the communication of Bush Routes was fast enough to have the tour fully planned before our vacation started.The price however was a bit higher than initially displayed on safaribookings.com. Due to our late booking we should pay the safari at the time we got picked up in DAR, but unfortunately we had some problems with the ATMs there (and did not bring enough money with us to pay the whole tour). Thanks to Bush Routes that they drove us to several ATMs, so we still could manage to start the tour just with a little loss of time.
The tour itself then was well organized, with just one drop of bitterness...:
Actually in the tour description it was written that we will have a "knowledgeable English speaking driver/guide". And we cannot confirm this at all! Okay, we had a very knowledgeable driver (thanks Alfons) and he always brought us to very good places to see all the animals and made the Safari fantastic. Unfortunately he cannot speak English very well, so he could not share his knowledge with us... And we had another guy who was said to be our guide, but actually he was a trainee and was just starting to become a guide. For him it was the first time in the National Park as well and he had no knowledge about all the animals. His English was better than the driver's one and he understood the basic things, but did also not understand us when we were asking something about the animals or environment or anything else. That was a pity, because we thought (and we wanted) to get some more background information about everything. Anyway, he tried his best and was very friendly, was always looking if everything is okay, organizing the meals etc...
Nevertheless, this was not part of the tour description and if it would have been written correct, we would probably have booked another tour. For us it was important and this costs 1 star of the overall rating... The rest was fine and if someone is not very interested in the background information and just wants to see animals I can recommend this operator with no doubts.
GR
35-50 years of age | Experience level: first safari
Review about Lake Nakuru National Park by Despoina Christaki
Worth it to go! Great wildlife also here!
FR
35-50 years of age | Experience level: 2-5 safaris
Family safari in south of Tanzania
Gecko has been very reactive for the preparation of the Safari with mails exchange from France. They have tailored the trip with my recommandations. No surprise during the safari, everything was perfectly organised