US
20-35 years of age | Experience level: over 5 safaris
Dishonest Management
It's a long story, but in summation we paid extra to stay in nicer accommodations but were taken to another location without being told or asked. We had to confront the company before they would admit the mistake. Management made multiple excuses with a story that changed each time then promised a refund for the difference between the two places. We contacted the company multiple times for this refund and have yet to receive anything.
At the end of the day, there are so many great safari companies, why use one that you can't trust?
AL
20-35 years of age | Experience level: first safari
Beautiful place but needs a lot of work .
Is the most bad experience of my life !.
So we start from Zanzibar to Safari by boat and on fort way was good . We arrived there meet our guide and everything was good in Safari . When we be back by boat the beach was really bad and we say to Capitain of boat to be back because we cannot go with this weather in Zanzibar . And he said it’s okay . And after Everyone was feel like
35-50 years of age | Experience level: over 5 safaris
The most corrupt, dirty city littered with beggars
Dar-Es-Salaam is the most corrupt, dirty city. Littered by beggars constantly asking for money. From the time you land in Dar-es-Salaam until you leave they will extract as much money from you as a foreigner and create unnecessary problems for you even if you do not have one just to extract money from you. During my recent experience I was returning back to England and I was asked for USD 100 just so I can take some species I bought. The country has no laws or regulations. Everyone makes their own laws as they go along to create problems to tourists and extract as much money as possible. A destination to avoid at all costs.
Very bad experience with Elkan Safaris
After paying upfront for a certain itinerary, the manager of the company (and I believe in fact sole employee as well) tried to change the itinerary and duration of the trip without any logic explanation
upon arrival at Serengeti Gate, we learnt that the funds to pay permits where not available. Of course, the operator lied to us saying that this was due to a system failure and ask if we could do the "favor" of paying for the entrance again and get a refund from him after finishing the safari. After 3 hours assessing options at the very gate (and subsequently wasting the time that was scheduled for safari that day), we have decided to pay only for one day, without any certainty that the day after the operator would not be coming up with the same request
thanks to the manager of the driver (a subcontractor), we could finish our safari without major incidents, apart from the inconvenience of having to turn up every single day (of a total of 5) to the offices to extend the permit as the moneys we had paid in advance were never deposited as they should have been
back to Arusha, the manager of Elkan Safaris tried even not to pay the money he owed us and we had to threaten him with reporting to the police to get our money back, which we finally did some 3 hours before going back to our homeland
I am not wasting my time trying to sort out whether all this behaviour was ill-intentioned or simply careless, all I can say is that I strongly recommend avoiding the services of this tour operator if you want to save yourselves some headaches
under20 years of age | Experience level: over 5 safaris
Review about Tanzania by Aidan
there are a lot of animals but to many cars that disturb migrations and i feel so bad for the animals
It was a very bad trip because John Bakari. A very good trip because Cliff Gustaff Tety.
We are just coming back from a travel in Tanzania. Our stay started on 23/10/2014 up to 02/11/2014. The tour organizer was John Bakari,. He was chosen because being French speaking, because known by the Belgian group leader since many years . He is the owner of the agency "Voyage Africain" based in Arusha.
Our group that was consisting in six people was victim of a large swindle. An advance of 60% of the total amount was paid on Bakari's bank account during the month of January 2014. The balance would be paid below the board on the 24/10/2014. When still in Belgium, in spite of the reiterated requests of our group leader, John Bakari never provided us any invoice. We realized, gradually, that nothing of what was envisaged was organized, nothing was booked. On the spot, John Bakari tapped us more money. He promised to reimburse this loan at our return to Arusha. Conclusion: the 13.200€ paid by the members of our group for this travel of 10 days disappeared.
We were lucky in our misfortune, to become acquainted with Cliff Gustaff Tety, guide certified and driver. He enabled us to carry out the activities foreseen in our circuit. During the circuit he was in communication with the wife of John Bakari for the payment of the invoices related with these activities. Christina, John Bakari's wife, always claimed that her husband would pay any invoice. Cliff Tety went thus guaranteeing the payment since he had the word of the wife of John Bakari. He went guaranteeing at the time of our passage in the national park of Mahale. Again he went guaranteeing the payment for the hiring of the boat which transferred us from Mahale to Kigoma. For our stay at the Arumeru River Lodge, again he spoke in favour of our cause. At the airport of Kilimandjaro at Arusha, the day of our return towards Europe/Belgium, agents of the national parks (TANAPA) were waiting us requiring us to pay the pending invoices. Even if they didn't have any right to do so, they tried to block us in Tanzania. They let to us go only thirty minutes before the take-off apparently convinced by the arguments of Cliff and those of Bernard, the group leader. Later, when the Europeans were gone we were informed that Cliff was arrested and imprisoned in Kigoma. Up to now we don't know why. Blackmail, keeping an hostage, and so on...
Finally John Bakari swindled us for more than €13.200. We lodged a complaint.
I did only deliver to you a very short outline of our adventure. So if there are candidates who envisaged to go to Tanzania, don't hesitate in contacting me on Facebook for more details.
Well, not what we expected
We closed our booking a few days earlier with kanut. Talked on the phone and he seemed really nice. First of all the driver- lynus was terrible. He was angry and rude most of the time. On the way to the first park he almost fell asleep on the wheel several times. On the way it started raining and the rain got in to the jeep. When we told him he just got mad and said it's not his fault. The cook that came with him was an 18 years old boy who didn’t knew how to cook anything. On the second day our driver got into a fight with another driver that almost got violent. All and all we enjoyed our safari but not thank to kanut safari but because it was beautiful.
IT
Very unpleasant!
It has been a terrible experience with KetSafari Tour.
The only thing they seemed to want is your money and for the rest they didn't care. And the option we had chosen was not even so cheap.
We paid to spend more than a week sitting on a van everyday and travelling for more than 9 hours per day which was a boring and tiring experience and didn't worth the money paid. Once at the lodges what we were doing was sitting in the van (again!) for 2/3 hours to go out on safari with the most silent and speechless driver. On top of this it was even more irritating that we haven't seen much. I know that the safari experience is not like being in a zoo and you cannot predict wether you will see some animals or not but every time once back to the lodges there were bunches of people excited as they have seen many of the big five (especially the most difficult ones). And it was clear that it wasn't only luck but definitely they had a professional driver.
This made us upset all the time. The only 2 sentences our driver was able to say were that we had plenty of time and places to visit so we would have seen something and also he was begging us to invest money on him so we could buy him a new van and he could start his own business!
On the last day, on the way back we refused to stop for lunch despite it was already paid as we were looking forward to end that pain that was making us feeling SO sick!
IE
35-50 years of age | Experience level: 2-5 safaris
Aquila is terrible. May as well go to a zoo!!
Terrible. Not really a safari. Beside main road, loads of fences and gates. Few animals. Day at zoo would.be better
US
20-35 years of age | Experience level: 2-5 safaris
Fraudulent company
We booked our trip with David and Goliath as well in late Aug early September 2014, and had a very similar experience to the other reviews here. I looked for reviews on this comany before booking and seemed like they had gotten decent reviews (atleast for Kili treks). We had to pay 300 dollars more after landing in Arusha otherwise the company boss David Bungama refused to start the safari. They sent us official looking itineraries with hotel information. But the actual hotels we were put up in were way cheaper and of inferior quality. He promised to pay us back but there was always an excuse to not do so. We had even booked a Zanzibar leg through him, but on checking into the hotel in Zanzibar, we found out he had not paid our hotel bill. We had to settle the matter by not just paying the hotel bill all over again, but having to endure a lot of unpleasantness from the local tour operator and hotel staff. We spent a lot of money in arranging this trip, and it turned out to be a disaster because of the tour company we chose.
The sotry I get from David Bungama is he had hired someone to set up his websites, who had then proceeded to hack into his safaribooking website and then sign up customers impersonating David, and then taken the money and absconded.
Even though I trouble believing his story completely, i gave him the benefit of the doubt, and entertained the possibility that he was merely incompetent and a little guillible in allowing another person to handle his website and use his bank acocunt for wire transfers. But I just read one of the recent reviews from another customers around the same time, and it appears he uses these kind of tactics regularly. Whatever the truth, there are plenty of other companies offering similar tours with much better service, so dont bother risking an expensive trip like this to such a company, they are either dishonest or incompetent. And if others have had a bad experience with him as well, please post your experiences as well, so future tourists do not get their trips ruined. If you wish you may also get in touch with me, as I m planning to report this matter to the authorities, and would make a much stronger case if there are multiple parties reporting such fraudulent behavior.