BE
20-35 years of age | Experience level: first safari
Nice safari experience, with an organisation that has room for improvement.
My partner and I thoroughly enjoyed this safari experience. We had a fun group (us and 4 others we did not know beforehand), and each national park visit was breathtaking in its own way. The organisation was adequate in some regards, but did fall short in some others.
- Our guide knew his way around the parks, and managed to make sure we saw a ton of different animals. He answered our questions but did not take a lot of initiative to give us explanations about the animals/areas we saw. He was enthousiastic and playful at times, but overall did not seem very interested in getting 'connected' with the group, with an attitude that can be best described as nonchalant: not to a problematic extent, but not very involved. Adequate, but not great.
- The camping experience was quite adventurous. The tents were ok, but it was not possible to really secure them into the ground. During a storm at night, this lead to some panic with someone's tent flying around the campsite (that had a large number of jackal and hyena visitors). Nobody got hurt in the end, but several people of the group were (understandably) scared out of their minds throughout this all, yet our guide did not seem to care very much and did not give an impression of being committed to helping out, and to keeping the group safe and at ease. "Just keep sleeping" is not an appropriate response if a scared person asks what to do incase a hyena manages to enter your tent at night.
- The food tasted good, but the way it was stored was often quite unhygienic. Of course, while on a safari adventure in Africa you need to have realistic expectations about this, but there's a minimum of effort you would expect a cook to make regarding hygiene and ours didn't always do that. The best example: the fruit and vegetables that we were to eat later on were lying on the ground in the camping site kitchen, with rats and birds running rampant through them. We suggested to the cook to put this food in a box (the least you can do to keep it protected a little better) and helped him do it, just to find the food lying around on the dirty ground again the next day for no apparent reason (once again between the rats and birds).
- On the fourth day of the trip, we were told the plan was to visit the Ngorongoro crater for just +-3 hours and then leave by noon, even though our park entry pass allowed us to stay in the park until much later. The group needed to do some negotiating with the guide to keep us in the park for the maximum amount of time. In the end we had a great day there (and after talking about all this, our guide did put in a much better overall effort in Ngorongoro), but that does not change the fact that that day would have been cut inexplicably short had it not been for the group intervening.
- The Hekima House, were we stayed our last night of the trip, was ok overall but our room was quite unclean. The food, bathroom and staff were nice though.
In the end we got the impression that the organisation was receptive to our feedback and willing to improve, which is definitely a positive aspect worth mentioning. We believe Hekima is a young organisation capable of giving many people great safari experiences in the future, but also that they need to improve in the aspects mentioned above. Even though these things did not ruin the entire experience for us, they very well might for other travelers.
About the parks:
- Tarangire: various types of vegetation, many hilly parts so beautiful viewpoints, lots of animals.
- Serengeti: more flat open spaces, less vegetation, many animals yet more spread out from each other, lots and lots of lions.
- Ngorongoro: unbelievable setting, many different animals close together in a breathtaking volcanic creater, no doubt the highlight of our trip.
- Lake Duluti: definitely not a 'safari' day, more of a relaxing experience on the last day, enjoying some peace and quiet (and birds). A nice day but not comparable to the true safari experiences in Tarangire, Serengeti & Ngorongoro.
US
50-65 years of age | Experience level: first safari
Communication leaves a lot to be desired
I feel like the Kanyezi staff did an adequate job but could have returned communications in a more timely manner and I never really felt confident in where I was in the process. It was a fabulous trip which was mainly due to the Sabi Sabi Reserve people.
20-35 years of age | Experience level: first safari
Wouldn't use again
I did the 52 day Southern Safari trip with Absolute Africa traveling from Nairobi to Cape Town. Highlights include rafting along the Zambezi river, Spitzkoppe and of course all the amazing animals we saw on safari (Serengeti, endangered rhinos at Matopos, Etosha). Some driving days were long (we covered a lot of countries in 52 days), tent equipment was good quality and food was usually plentiful (unless people in your group want to eat breakfast before breakfast time and they don't save you enough food). For the first 10 days our tour leader Kip/Edmund was great, he had a positive attitude and he was really patient. Then we joined another group and had Martin as our tour leader. Whilst Martin was really informative in the beginning about the daily itinerary, with time i felt he became less informative. It was also clear to some people that Martin favoured certain individuals in the group. I understand that there will be people (even tour leaders) that get on with certain people more than others but as a professional i expected him to treat the group as a whole and listen to us as a whole, taking control of the group during more difficult situations when needed. There were certain situations where Martin acted quite childishly to certain members of the group, a few times he did not respect people's confidentiality by talking to certain members of the group about other people. One particular incident he publicly ridiculed someone in front of the whole group during dinner for not helping cook dinner one night because she was tired. You wouldn't expect this from someone who's been a tour leader for 20 years.
Some of the optional activities i did i felt like it wasn't worth the money, for example we spent 3 days in the Okavango Delta and one day had 9 hours of free time where we had to stay in the bush camp or swim in a pond. Our tour leader didn't tell us this so some people didn't bring things like books etc. Absolute claim that they send you the most updated information (itinerary and optional activities list) however they included activities that haven't been running for years or they don't even run. We went to Antelope Park, Zimbabwe a private reserve home to a lion conservation programme with the aim of breeding lion cubs from captured lions in order to release them into the wild. Since 2005 they haven't released a single lion. I read articles by National Geographic and Africa Geographic that questioned the ethicacy of the programme and there was also speculation about whether the park involved itself in Africa's lion industry (look up Blood Lions for more info). Animal conservation should never involve animal-human interaction or breeding and these do/use to do both these things e.g. cub handling and lion walks.
Correspondence with Absolute prior and throughout my trip was thorough and professional. After giving feedback about my experiences there was an obvious lack of accountability and ignorance. Overland tours are a great way of traveling to so many African countries and overall i really enjoyed most of the activities i did and the people i traveled with. However there are quite a few African overland tours and I am unlikely to use them again.
20-35 years of age | Experience level: over 5 safaris
Safari itself was positive but tour operator's organizational skills left a lot to be desired
If I were reviewing the gorilla trekking experience and safari itself, I would have provided a rating of 4. Unfortunately, the disorganization and confusing communication I experienced from the actual planning around the trip by the tour operator before and after the trip detracted from my overall customer experience. As mentioned by other reviewers, there are still a few improvements that the tour operator should pay attention to and address, specifically around improving their communication - including more proactive communication leading up to trip around key logistical details and making their communication within office more streamlined so there is less confusion for the client. There were a few coordination lapses and lack of attention to detail that detracted from what would have been otherwise an enjoyable trip. Though the owner did try to redeem this by following up on a daily basis on how our trip was going, unfortunately, it did not prevent the lapses from affecting my overall customer experience - including confusion around payment and price for trip. The redeeming factor was that the safari guide and driver - Hamza - was very client-focused, trustworthy, and efficient and once the trip started, our group spent the majority of our time with him.
Dive adventure in the Quirimbas archipelago
Our cruise in the Quirimbas archipelago was rather difficult : we were not welcomed. Most of the islands are private so we were not allowed to land. Even though we had a permit, sometimes we were not allowed to anchor.
We visited Ibo island : the village is out of time, a very pleasant and peaceful place where people are very quiet and the colors at the end of the afternoon on the old buildings were so beautiful. Some species of birds were standing in the mangrove but we didn't have enough time for bird watching.
The dive conditions were difficult : courant, poor visibility. But whatever we had good times and Neptune's arms dive site is amazing. Many schools of fish, lutjanus, caranx and also reef white sharks.
US
50-65 years of age | Experience level: over 5 safaris
One lodge was more than expected but the other was less.
I have seen much more wildlife in the Serengeti and Masaai Mara and even Kruger. I was extremely surprised at that because I thought Botswana was going to have many more animals. My one lodge Mapula was terrific. Great food, staff, amazing tracker/guide, beautiful room. It was 41 degrees on one day and 39-40 on the others and the was little to help the heat. The fans in the room were over the seating area only. That could be improved, but otherwise lovely place.
The second place (crocodile teeth? in the local language) was much lower level. On our orientation in this semiarid place we were told that there were a number of big scorpions seen in the camp and that we were to be careful because they were extremely poisonous. I understand we are in Africa, but I would have thought there would be more responsibility on the camp staff to be watchful to rid the camp proper of scorpions. The tracker/guides were not great; the least knowledgeable and least excited guides/trackers of any safari I have been on. (An I have been on a good number throughout Africa). The food was not very tasty at all, edible but nothing exciting. We had to travel 2 hours from the airport and 2 + hours each way to get to the animals. That was a lot of driving. Also, we had lunch in a place that turned out to have ants in the sand and many of us had many ant bites with very itchy feet that swelled from the number of bites. I expected much more from Botswana given the hype and the cost in comparison to other great safari experiences.
DE
20-35 years of age | Experience level: 2-5 safaris
Great Trip but ....
First, I can't emphasize enough how beautiful and scenic landscape and wild-life watching is! Our Tourguide showed us great places. Since all tour operators do more or less the same (travel plan, camping sites, food) its maybe important to know how Trip Advisor Safaris works: Its not an operator, but it provides your booking to sub-contractors. For example, the woman who took our payment was from Seven Wonders Safari, other people in our group booked at Hekima Safari... I don't say it's not good or bad, it's just not transparent and you feel that it doesn't matter at all which organisation you choose (at least in this price range). We definitely got a good deal with Trip Advisor Safaris, since they charge less than other organisations.
What I didn't like so much was the communication. Before we paid the deposit communication was fluent, after having paid, questions weren't answers anymore. This doesn't raised my trust but in the end everything worked out well and we were picked up at the airport as promised. The second thing I didn't like that much was our tour guides attitude from time to time. On our first day Umar guided us. He was really great and told us a lot interessting things. Unfortunately, he had to leave after the first day (for personal reasons as he told us) and was replaced by Amani. For my impression, Amani seemed a bit rude and not very motivated. One day he had our binoculars in the trunk and refused to get them for us even if we pleased him several times. As you can imagine... being on a safari without binoculars is not that helpful ;-) The worst thing for me was when he got off road once to get closer to a group of cheetahs (in his defense, a member of the group coerced him to do so) but it's forbidden to leave the trail and the protection of animals should weigh higher than annoying tourists. I know, a lot of tourist want to get as close as possible to the animals but Serengeti is not a zoo and I expect guides to follow the parks rules.
Even if I complained a lot it was an unforgettable trip and I can recommend strongly to do it - no matter with which organisation. By booking Trip Advisor Safaris you get the same quality as by any other organisation as long as your willing to deal with some intransparencies.
US
50-65 years of age | Experience level: first safari
Sabi Sabi Bush Lodge and Safari was amazing; Kanyezi not so much.
The Sabi Sabi staff and accommodations were absolutely amazing and first class. The ranger and tracker made our trip! We saw so much more than we expected - up close and personal! The food, service, and villas were 5 star. However, I would book direct rather than use Kanyezi in the future. Chris and Michael were with us only in Capetown. In Sabi Sabi, they had their "friend" act as our guide. We really didn't need a guide in Sabi Sabi because the lodge takes care of everything. In Victoria Falls, we were all basically on our own with a local guide who we had difficulty understanding. The accommodations in Vic Falls were far less than the 4 Star advertised.
Air travel was arranged very late despite emailing and calling on several occasions. We only received our international flight arrangements/tickets 2 weeks prior to our departure day! Given we were required to wire transfer the full payment months before the actual trip, this made us very nervous. Most all guests in our group had similar issues. Some did not get airline tickets until days before departure.
Lastly, Kanyezi threatened with legal action a guest in our group who posted a question online about their lack of responsiveness. They upset one couple on our trip and told them they should have booked the trip themselves! While generally nice people, they are highly unprofessional at times. This is marketed as a luxury trip of a lifetime ....
IT
20-35 years of age | Experience level: first safari
welcome to the jungle
The safari itself has been fantastic. Good food, good driver/guide (Emmanuel), accomodation in tent as expected. We passed a very good time with the animals and the wild saving a lot of money. We only have had 2 misunderstanding with the hotel for the 1 night accomodation and for the way back to the airport, so we suggest to be preparated and maybe to organize yourself to save money and to avoid surprises. We suggest Twinkle star tour for your tanzanian trip.
US
Animals are amazing but don't use BIGMAC Safaris
Nothing can beat the wildlife of Kenya, however we had the WORST tour guide, John and would not recommend BigMac safaris or John as a guide. He rarely spoke to us and quite honestly barely acknowledged us. He put us in danger by driving insane speeds on the roads and with broken seat belts. He was on his phone ALL of the time, if not talking then texting and looked like we were bothering him anytime we asked a question. He was frequently late for us sometimes at the expense of us missing meals. Go with another company, ANY OTHER company has to be better. He only spoke to us at the end when he wanted to explain to us what a good guide he was and if we didn't believe him we should "check trip advisor".