CA
Detail orientated and truly respected by owners/ managers of lodges and guides.
This was my #1 bucket list trip, and have wanted to go to Africa since I was 14 years old. I’m now 68. So to find someone to make all your dreams come true, one needs to use Compass Odyssey. It was five days in Cape Town, a stunning city and the surrounding peninsula. Garth Angus was our guide and his wealth of knowledge of not only the history of South Africa but the floral and fauna made that trip a highlight. When you are in a vehicle with someone for 8- 10 hours, you want to have a rapport with that person and we got it in spades with Garth.
Next off to Namibia for 10 days and got to meet our driver and guide, Raymond. A truly spectacular country with a myriad of geography. The dunes, the coast just spectacular. Raymond was also an exceptional guide, very proud of his country and a great teacher, the only place we saw rhinos, both black and white!
Our final stop was 6 days in Botswana, 2 night in the Kansane area at Chobe River Lodge, and lucked out with one of the best guides again. Hi Tefo! He showed us some spectacular wildlife around the Kasane area of Chobe park, including lions, leopards, Cape buffalo elephants, just about anything you would be interested in seeing, his tracking ability was amazing.
Lastly we flew to the Mababe area in the Okavango Delta where our guide was the kind and gentle Antony. The Nokanyana Lodge suffered a devistating fire just a couple of weeks before our arrival. They lost the dining hall and lounge and outdoor viewing deck in the fire. The staff worked extra hard to make our stay the very best it could possibly be and always had smiles for us all the time, a shout out to Lemo and Chef Nati, only two of the wonderful staff who worked at Nokanya!
Antony knew that to see a cheetah would have been the icing on the cake for us, and he tried so hard but those elusive cheetahs were not to be spotted. Other great wildlife abounded, especially the hippos.
So as we think and dream about our return trip, we will be definitely using Compass Odyssey and the excellent services of Darren (Crusty) and Kate Humphries.
CN
35-50 years of age | Experience level: first safari
Caring
It's an fantastic journey with Ozon light for 7 days Safari. We see a lot animals. Our guide, Dismass is a very experienced one, give us a lot information and advise.
US
65+ years of age | Experience level: first safari
I found the owner to be a bit dishonest and deceitful.
First, let me say that if you haven't visited Africa, then you need to put it on your bucket list. Our trip was amazing as far at what we saw in the field. We saw lions in trees, the elusive Cheetah, baby elephants, zebras, hundreds of thousands of Wildebeest on migration, etc.......including a take-down of a Wildebeest by a pride of lions. The staff at all of the lodges were fantastic!! This was an amazing trip!
So now you are asking why the one star. The one star comes from the way we were treated by the owner of the company.
At the beginning, the owner was extremely responsive to our questions. But once we sent in our deposits, he went radio silent. Responses to emails either were delayed by weeks or never happened. I sent three emails in one month and never got a response. And this went on for months. His communications were horrible within our group of six.
We booked semi luxury resorts for the 10-12 days in the field. The first three were great. The fourth was a fantastic place but not what we booked. His reasoning was, it got us closer to the animals. And I will give him kudo's on that, as he was correct and the lodge was semi luxury. But it would have been nice to learn about the change in advance as it added almost 2 hours to the drive that day. At the same time we learned he only booked 2 of 3 park permits. This was a disaster for us as we had to wait almost 2 days for the issue to be resolved, then our guide (who was fantastic) told us he was getting incorrect information from the office and had to deviate from our normal game drive to get to a remote ranger station to get the third day permit. Needless to say our guide (not the owner) was not happy either.
The next two places we stayed were no where near what we expected or paid for. Instead of semi luxury, we got a "Eco-friendly" tent site where some members of our party had no hot water for three days. The last site was also a tented site. When confronted, the owner blamed his office staff for the confusion. Going to our last site I asked him where we were going and he said he did not know. How can you not know where you are taking us? Then he passes the original place we booked and traveled another hour to the last tent site! This site was located in the park, but so far away from the animals we could not go back for our last day.
We confronted him again where he finally admitted that he was afraid to tell us that all of the parks had significantly raised (in some cases quadruple) the entrance fees.
So instead of telling us up front, where we could have come up with an alternate plan, he decided to reduce the quality of the resorts to save money. If he had been open and honest with us we would have probably just paid the difference. Issues do crop up. It's how you deal with them that defines how good you are. But he lost out in the end, after the last tent issue, as we demanded a partial refund or we weren't going to leave the site.
-We were told 6 hour drives from location to location when reality was we drove for 11 hours on some days.
-Their advertised picnics were nowhere near what reality was and one "picnic" was in a parking lot of a gas station.
-Binoculars advertised were not available in some vehicles.
-Advertising ample legroom in the vehicles was not completely accurate.
-He spent a lot of time on the phone instead of talking to us.
-We finally learned that when he said "it's an hour from here" we just added another hour! It was a running joke between us all!
I could go on and on, but I think you get the message I am trying to convey.
The visit to Africa was amazing, but the the tour operator (owner) was a bit dishonest and deceitful to us, and as such I cannot recommend Features Africa Journeys.
PE
20-35 years of age | Experience level: first safari
Excellent service
The tour through the parks of Tanzania was an incredible experience. Elias, our guide from the Suricata team, carried out the entire tour perfectly from start to finish. We managed to see the 5 most dangerous animals and that was amazing.
ES
50-65 years of age | Experience level: first safari
Excelent service and organization!
Jacinta organized our safari with care and profesionality making a tailored trip exactly the way we wanted.
Thanks Breezy Tours, Jacinta and Geoffrey for a wonderful lifetime experience for our family!
US
65+ years of age | Experience level: first safari
Awesome job Chloe, a fantastic job of planning a trip that greatly exceeding our wildest expectation
Chloe took our desires and put them into an absolutely perfect African adventure. The safari camps were 5 star - knowledgeable and sharing guides, ANIMALS, unbelievable meals, remarkable accommodations, attentive staff and exposure to the local area. Everywhere we went there was someone one to escort us to the proper location and make sure we were comfortable (with accommodation AND plans for the next day). The pre trip information was extremely organized and most helpful. No issues with communication, Chloe always responded with answers and suggestions. I strongly recommend Off2Africa to plan your adventure to Africa. Let them put you in the best possible camps, hotels, side trips, etc. Let them work out transportation in Africa. Our adventure was awesome because Chloe handled all the details and put us in the best possible places, scheduled our in Africa transportation and made sure someone looked after us every step of the way.
US
35-50 years of age | Experience level: first safari
Very responsible and very professional
Everything was great. People are nice and very experienced
GG
Very knowledgeable, good humour and friendly.
Well organised and on time, with great guides. We saw the big five. Would recommend to family and friends.
FR
35-50 years of age | Experience level: first safari
Excelent, to exceed our expectations, very good
Warm welcome and high quality accommodation. Wonder and emotion at each outing
Competent guide and eager to share and discover this exceptional faune, he made us see thé bit five and much moré good communication of French and English.
This safari and its guide are exceptional++
50-65 years of age | Experience level: first safari
Excellent bespoke service
After much research we chose Wakanda for our once in a lifetime Honeymoon trip to Tanzania and could not have been more happy with our choice.
Before our adventure started I communicated with Aishwarya and together we planned our itinerary, she was very responsive to all of my requests and nothing was too much trouble. There are many tour operators offering safaris and Kilimanjaro treks and I narrowed my selection down to 3 companies but the main thing that swayed my decision was the fact that when I decided to add on internal flights at the start of the safari Aishwarya did not take advantage and charge me a ridiculous sum for which I knew were cheap flights. The other 2 companies wanted to charge me nearly £300 each for the same flights Wakanda offered me for £100, this is when I knew I could trust this company.
We decided to fly from Arusha to Northern Serengeti to avoid the long drive to the starting destination (I highly recommend this). We were met at the airstrip by Aishwarya our personal photographer and Edward our guide and driver. The Land Rover they supplied for our safari was perfect, clean comfortable, spacious and with the opening roof it had excellent viewing possibilities. Edward was very proud of his Land Rover and kept it clean and tidy at every opportunity. We drove a short distance from the airstrip and Edward quickly gave us our first animal sighting, a small group of elephants. We kept seeing Zebra and deer and wanted to stop to take pictures but on Edward's advice we carried straight to the river where after a short wait we were privileged to see our first wilder beast river crossing. We quickly learnt to take the expert advice of Edward as he had expert knowledge of the best way to see the animals. We were awestruck with the wilder beasts crossing the river and it was so nice to be able to just watch and take in the whole amazing spectacle without having to worry about taking poor iPhone pictures knowing Aishwarya was capturing everything on her huge telephoto camera. Within the space of 2 hours we had ticked off 2 of the big 5 (elephant and buffalo) and seen a big migration crossing, a brilliant start to our 6 day safari.
As the evening approached we headed to our first migration camp, Camp Zebra. It was referred to as a tented accommodation but we have never seen tents like this before, it was more like a spacious cabin with a king size bed and a full en-suite toilet and shower, this definitely felt like luxury accommodation. Aishwarya's accommodation recommendations for this night and every other night were brilliant and could not be faulted. The food served in the mess tent was excellent as was the packed lunch supplied by each camp for the next day. I say packed lunch but in reality it was far better than that, Edward had a fully equipped large picnic hamper with insulated stainless steel bowls which were filled each day with hot delicious food which were served to us with a lovely glass of wine in the most amazing scenic locations. We travelled long distances each day with Edward guiding us to perfect animal encounters and sharing his knowledge of the area and animal behaviour along the way, there was always something new and exciting to look at each day. Whenever we saw animals Edward would position us perfectly to observe them and Aishwarya would take the most amazing close up photos for us. I was surprised how close we actually got to the animals. I thought we would be observing animals from a distance with binoculars but I was totally wrong, we got very close with the animals, often walking (or running in the case of the cheetahs we saw hunting) in front of the vehicle. Edward and Aishwarya were a great team who were a pleasure to be with on our long and exciting adventure and they felt like friends by the end of the safari, they enabled us to see all of the big 5 and much much more, they definitely exceeded our expectations of what a safari should be and we highly recommend asking for them if you book with Wakanda. Aishwarya was passionate about her photography and took many pictures of the animals and also of us, this was definitely a huge bonus as we did not return with loads of poorly taken selfies but with expertly edited professional photos which we will treasure forever.
Edward, Aishwarya, Daniel, Goddy and all of the porters made our honeymoon perfect and we cannot thank you all enough.
If you are looking for bespoke reasonably priced adventure of a lifetime then we definitely highly recommend Wakanda Safari and Tours.
P.S on our return Aishwarya sent us all of the beautiful professional photos she had taken with no charge. They were amazing!
