20-35 years of age | Experience level: first safari
I would recommend you avoid at all costs
We had a terrible experience with them. The driver/guide showed little interest in providing us with a satisfactory experience. He barely spoke to us during the 8-day safari and made no effort to establish any sort of rapport. We had to initiate conversations and invite him to join us for dinners. Despite having chairs and tables in the car, he didn't attempt to find pleasant spots for us to enjoy lunch with a view. Instead, he suggested having lunch in the car on several occasions, even after spending the entire morning there.
We opted for a mid-tier safari, but the packed food was atrocious, especially lunches. (Dinners, especially at Nyerere Camp and Ruaha were excellent)
We understand that box lunches are typically simple, but in this case, they were inedible. The chicken was so dry it might as well have been a rock, and despite my partner being vegetarian, they got the order wrong three times. After informing our driver of the mistake the first time, he neglected to double-check the following day, forcing us to inspect the lunch box ourselves.
The car got also stuck once, which of course can happen as its part of the experience but the guide/driver did not even say sorry, he just silenced himself and we did not know what was happening or how long that might have taken.
Additionally, at one of the camps, the food was excessively chewy to the point where I experienced gum inflammation. After reporting this to Ibrahim, the safari organizer at LuiTours, he changed our accommodations. However, he then proceeded to ignore us, failing to respond to any further communication. This level of unprofessionalism is unacceptable. Avoid LuiTours at all costs.
FR
35-50 years of age | Experience level: first safari
We felt the company had corrupt guides, harassed animals. We wouldn't recommend them
My family thought we were going to have a nice safari with this guy Lenny, saw reviews that he must have written himself. We arrived from our home in Paris, no one was there to pick us from airport and it went downhill from there. We feel we were charged too much money, asked for partial refund which we never have received. This guy drives so fast, my daughter got slammed onto the floor one day as he only drove like crazy from one sighting to the next, never asking us what we wanted to do, my poor daughter was covered in bruises and not even an apology. The animals seemed scared of dis guy, never again, we will not do dis company and don't recommend. Has to be more honest people out there for family vacation.
DE
50-65 years of age | Experience level: over 5 safaris
They did not show up
Booked a Chobe Safari with them and exchanged lots of emails beforehand but then they simply did not show up at the agreed time. The entire day was lost as obviously it was not possible to find anyone else.
20-35 years of age | Experience level: over 5 safaris
The unprofessional service of Ambula was characterized by rude behavior and lack of accountability.
I am not one to publicly complain about service, but I had a horrible experience with Ambula Tours that I feel someone who is considering using their service should know about. I booked a transfer for my brother and on the way to the airport, they were in an accident. He ended up missing his domestic flight and international flight - leaving my family with over R40,000 in unexpected costs. Accidents happen and luckily everyone was okay. The communication from Ambula was shocking (they said another car was on the way and would be there in 40-45 minutes, and it didn't arrive for another +2.5 hours!) and they did not help to cover any costs or, at the least, refund the cost of the trip. I would not suggest this service to anyone who values a company with integrity and safety.
35-50 years of age | Experience level: 2-5 safaris
The worst organisation of any company I've ever worked with
First of all, we booked a shared safari with Mousebird safaris, and we ended up joining a convoy of around 6 safari vehicles, each with 6-7 people in them, with unmarked or or unmarketed cars (I.e. they didn't have the mousebird logos on them). After speaking to several people in our tour, we realised that every couple or individual had booked with a separate and different safari agent. And we were brought together to join this trip.
This meant that almost everyone on the trip were staying in different places. This lead to us being picked up very early every day and taken to a meeting destination, often to wait for several hours before starting the actual safari, and spending much less time enjoying the nice lodges we had booked to stay at. (The meeting places were often very basic and not that nice to hang out in). The same was true for the evening, we would drive around after the safari ended, often for several hours, to drop people at their respective lodges.
The major consequence of this (not even considering all the time we wasted just waiting) was that almost every day, after collecting people and waiting for those camping to pack up, we only ever started our safaris at around 9 or sometimes even later. A far cry from the stated "dawn/sunrise safari" we expected.
We also never did any night or evening safaris, or any safari walks, which I have done on other safaris around Africa. Overall it was very poorly planned.
The drivers didn't even know where we were supposed to be staying half of the time, and we had to tell them, or keep an eye on Google maps to make sure they didn't go the wrong way. We were taken to the wrong lodge 3 times on our trip. Which was very tiring in the end. And during the drives to and from the lodges, it was not so easy to look for animals, as almost all the drivers had clearly learned to drive by playing GTA (they drove INSANELY fast and recklessly).
Speaking of driving, since we were driving in a convoy, there were over 10 occasions where one of our party (including our car at least 3 times), got severely stuck in the mud and/or potholes, and in some cases it took over an hour to get the car free. All the time we were all just waiting, with no wildlife nearby. We didn't see any other safari jeeps get stuck the whole time, only our group, which led us to believe that our drivers were not so experienced or trained in driving the terrain.
The days were very long, and we had no snacks or suitable lunches provided either. We are both vegan and booked this trip because the description said caters for vegan. We were told on booking it would be "easy". Most days we were picked up at 6-7am, waited around til about 9.30am to start, but only stopped for lunch around 2-3pm. And on every day we were there, we were given something non-vegan. Or there were minimal options for us. For instance the group would get meat, rice and some steamed veg. So for us, it was just the veg (usually just green beans and carrot) and some mildly warm rice, which just felt like they didnt even think about us at all. And we never stopped anywhere to get any snacks.
One day they almost didn't provide us with any water, but after a long argument, the driver finally took us to a shop and suggested we buy it ourselves... despite "free unlimited water" being written in all the contracts. We didn't agree and eventually, the driver got us water.
To top it all off, the contact we were speaking to before leaving specifically asked us to bring cash to do a final payment to "pay for some in tour activities", such as national park entrance fees etc. So we paid half on card in advance and brought the rest in cash as agreed. But the night before the safari, the organiser came to out hotel to take the cash and we never saw him again. So it mustn't have been for the entrance fees, in fact we never saw our driver exchange cash with anyone once, we believe it was just so we would pay them in cash instead.
I would not go with this safari company again, even if you paid me, as the hours wasted waiting have aged me by a decade.
US
50-65 years of age | Experience level: 2-5 safaris
Felt that driver interfered with wild life in a dangerous manner and was rude to other vehicles
Driver repeatedly used his vehicle to cut off male lion's intended direction. He probably was trying to give his customers a good photo opportunity; however, it was a bit dangerous and also selfish.
US
35-50 years of age | Experience level: first safari
Disorganized and Poor Customer Service
We went with this company on back to back days…1 in Zanzibar and 1 in Kenya. On day 1, we were supposed to swim with dolphins and sea turtles. We were also supposed to have time to explore Jozani Forest. Instead, we spent most of the day in the bus (2+ hours of it were with it not moving). We had a short stop at a beach, but were told we had to make it quick to make it to our lunch reservation at The Rock Restaurant. We were assured that we would get a chance to swim with dolphins and sea turtles afterwards. While the meal was nice, it was very disorganized. After the meal was over, it took Marl approximately an hour to settle up the bill with each person in the group. Rather than spending an hour at the restaurant, it ended up being 2 hours which further pushed things behind. We were then told we wouldn’t be able to stop for dolphins because it was too hot for them. I found out later friends of ours with a different company did swim with dolphins. We were then given a choice of aquarium to see the sea turtles, Jovani Forest or go straight to the cruise ship we came in on. If we chose the turtles, we wouldn’t have time to swim with them. We chose Jovani Forest. We only had 20 minutes there due to the disorganization. We had to stay close by due to the short amount of time. Luckily, we did see a few monkeys. So…our group of 4 spent over $400 for a glorified meal, 20 minutes at a forest that we didn’t get to explore much of, and hours on a hot bus.
Since the company is from Kenya, we gave them the benefit of the doubt. We expected the next day to go smoother. We got off the ship and made our way to the Jeeps. We were told before the day started it would go smoother. We were told we would load up the jeeps in order of arrival and each jeep would leave immediately once filled. Did that happen? Nope. We waited an hour before getting started with the long drive to Tsavo East. Once there, we had to wait another hour and a half to get in because of “system error”. Even though there was a “system error” there were still other people going into the park who were with other tour groups. The safari itself was nice. We saw lots of animals. When it came time to leave though, I’m pretty sure our driver got lost. We didn’t leave the park until nearly an hour after the rest of our group had left the park. A lunch at Voi Lodge was supposed to be included. We were supposed to go to Masai Village. All of that was cut out.
Everything that went wrong on both days always had an excuse that was blamed on someone or something else rather than taking responsibility for their mistakes or their miscommunication. There was no attempt to reconcile what was promised to be included but wasn’t. There was no offer of a partial refund for the things we were supposed to do but didn’t get to do. We felt like we were taken advantage of. We felt like we were lied to. We felt like we were scammed. This is a company that I highly recommend others to AVOID!
BE
We felt that there was no organization, no professionalism!
We were a group and we all have been very disappointed the 2 days
First one in Zanzibar and the second d one in Mombasa !
Really bad organization !
Most of the people in the group want to be reimburse !
Very bad company sorry
US
20-35 years of age | Experience level: 2-5 safaris
Bad Experience
Bad Experience, I will not come here again in my whole life.
SE
20-35 years of age | Experience level: first safari
We are so unhappy with our trip!
We are so unhappy with the trip! The car had problems at least 5 times, the suspension broke, the car could not be started, problems with the oil, overheated tires.
The WORST thing was that we feel that the owner Calvin scammed us out of money too!!