DE
20-35 years of age | Experience level: first safari
Perfectly organized - best Guide! :)
Had a super well organized 6 days private safari. The lodges has been really good as well as the food (happy we also had hot lunch, not lunch packages).
Sleeping in tented lodges was an amazing experience!
Freddy (Frederic) was the best Guide! He knows so much about animals and we have seen so much of them (also the big 5)!
ES
20-35 years of age | Experience level: 2-5 safaris
Amazing
It was a great experience to visit Uganda together with EBS TOURS. Our guide and the manager were amazing helping us from the very beginning until the end of the trip. Really recommend them to visit the pearl of Africa!!
50-65 years of age | Experience level: 2-5 safaris
Incredible 7 days Migration Safari with Eyes On Serengeti
Everything worked out perfectly: your arrangements were excellent, thank you Richard the manager/owner for all your efforts to make this happen. Our safari guide Lenard was great – saw a ton of game; herds of elephants, lions, cheetahs, zebra, wildebeest, giraffe, a variety of buck. Terrific overall; will use you for our next Africa trip.
Brown & family
35-50 years of age | Experience level: 2-5 safaris
Fantastic experience
Great professional service throughout my safari in Chobe, Botswana. The boat game drive was amazing encountering elegant colorful birds, and Nile crocodiles of various sizes. The game drive on land was equally just as pleasant. Nothing beats seeing wildlife in their natural habitat.
FR
20-35 years of age | Experience level: first safari
Fly in Safari To Serengeti
My friends and I had a wonderful experience, we had a fly In Safari from Zanzibar to Serengeti, we spent 1 day and a half doing game drive. We had the best time even if it was short, but we will definitly come back for a longer trip with Shammah Wonders.
Justine was very helpful and anwsered all our questions. and our guide Saidi made the Safari more fun and more interesting.
20-35 years of age | Experience level: first safari
Perfect first safari experience!
We first spoke with Tiago from Spirit of Kenya back in 2019 when we originally booked our trip to Kenya, for July 2020. With everything that then unfolded with the Covid-19 pandemic, we were forced to reschedule our planned trip to 2021, and subsequently to 2022. Tiago was nothing but incredibly helpful, absolutely nothing was too much hassle and he was always so quick to respond to queries. He explained everything perfectly, and made us feel at ease ahead of traveling. We had always dreamed of staying at Giraffe Manor, and despite the hotel being fully booked on our desired date, Tiago continued to follow up with the hotel for any cancellations and we were able to secure a room for our trip! The safari experience was incredible, from the moment we landed in Kenya we were looked after by Spirit of Kenya staff members, who ensured seamless transfers to and from airports. Our guide while in the Maasai Mara was called Joseph, who was also excellent! He was really knowledgable and ensured our needs were catered for at all times. We stayed at the Neptune Mara Rianta camp, and we cannot recommend the staff / accommodation and food highly enough! Now we're home, and can reflect on the trip of a lifetime, we can say wholeheartedly that we would definitely use Spirit of Kenya to book any future trips!
IT
20-35 years of age | Experience level: over 5 safaris
Best safari drive of my life
I have been to drives many other times, but this time was just perfect. The tour operator offers affordable but still very well organized safaris. I went to the Masai Mara, and thanks to our amazing guide Yasin we had just the most stunning experience. We saw all the big cats, even the most shy ones and the whole experience was great, as Yasin was also able to adjust the schedule according to our necessities. I will definitely go again and recommend this tour operator.
20-35 years of age | Experience level: 2-5 safaris
Great day out
A fantastic day out. Our driver/guide Wiggie (who drove us from Sandton to Pilanesburg) was really friendly, informative and prompt. Our guide in the park, Desmond was knowledgeable, friendly and very funny.
Would 100% recommend this experience to anyone looking for an amazing safari experience.
50-65 years of age | Experience level: 2-5 safaris
Professional, honest, generous team….dreams come true
This is not a short review but please bear with me…..
I first got in touch with Compass Odyssey after reading a number of reviews way back in 2019. Their bio was encouraging given that Darren and Kate are both Australian expats with travel, tourism and nature based backgrounds. My background is travel and tourism and Australian so I knew what i was looking for in an agent to handle our booking (namely good knowledge, great level of service and efficiency). What I discovered very quickly was I had found exactly the people upon whom I could trust.
Initially the plan was to visited South Africa in March 2020 …… and we all know what happened that year!
Granted I had some ideas of what we wanted to do for our trip but Darren spent time (over email) getting an even deeper understanding of our style of travel (independent), standard and type of accommodation we preferred and how we saw the trip unfolding all of which was evident when Darren presented the initial itinerary to me. Not much changed from then in terms of itinerary structure which looked like:
3 nights Cape Town, self drive along the Garden Route to the Eastern Cape and the Drakensburg Mountains to Hoedspruit for 2 weeks (approx 3500 kilometres), 3 nights our at a private game reserve in Greater Kruger, flights to and from Victoria Falls (2 nights) and 3 nights back in Johannesburg ….just a little over 4 weeks.
Things were ticking along nicely and the nasty little bug called COVID-19 struck, Australia closed its international borders on the day we were due to depart! This is when Darren and Kate really earned their stripes with us. Our travel insurance was problematic, we still wanted to go to South Africa and we’d paid in full. What to do? Darren and Kate negotiated with the various accommodation properties whom agreed to hold our monies until late 2021. Excellent! But our borders remained closed and more negotiating saw monies being held until the end of 2022.
Our borders opened at the end of 2021, I changed our dates to Aug/Sep departure, Darren weaved his magic with the operators and we have just completed an amazing 4 weeks in South Africa. Granted a few places had closed their doors due to the pandemic but Darren was able to find same for same in most cases so there was some out of pocket but it could have been a whole lot worse.
Compass’ communication is professional, timely, courteous and efficient. No question is too small or silly and in fact is encouraged throughout the process.
Compass’ product knowledge is excellent.
Compass’ customer service is outstanding ….nothing I’ve not experienced in many, many years.
Compass’ final documentation to you is unbelievable….everything you need to know before you go.
Compass Odyssey are not about churning the customers through but rather befriending them and really getting to know and understand expectations with genuine care and understanding.
Whilst in Sth Af Darren communicated with us a few times to see how things were going, making sure the accommodation properties were expecting us. Again I’ve never experienced this level of service.
The trip was memorable, so well planned and executed….they even timed a nice luxury 2 day break in the middle of what was a very busy trip….so well timed and appreciated.
Even though the pandemic delayed our trip for 2.5 years the end result was so well worth the wait and I’m so grateful to Darren and Kate for everything they did to ensure that this was possible.
You can’t go wrong in using Compass Odyssey as your African travel agent and yes I have already recommended them to friends and will use them again should we venture to back Africa (there’s so much more to explore!)
5*+++
20-35 years of age | Experience level: over 5 safaris
He was all i expected. So amazing, informed and linguistic
Its avery good and reliable company that i would use now and again.
So time keeping when it comes to serving tourists.
What you pay for is what you get and sometimes even more.
The three times i have travelled with Great Lions safari have been memorable and iam hoping to work with them more!.