Luxury Africa Safari Review: Tanzania, Kenya, Uganda, Botswana, South Africa, Kruger & Serengeti National Parks, Okavango Delta

Mara North and Botswana

Travel Company's Comments

We are shocked and saddened by this review, and I think it is an unfair reflection of the quality of the trip and an extremely unfair characterization of our role as his tour operator. In the review, the client raises five distinct issues with his trip.  I will explain these issues in detail below.  I think that each of the five details relates either to unreasonable expectations of quality, given the budget (i.e. 5-star quality for 4-star prices), or things that we simply cannot control (such as delays with bush plane transfers or unpredictable behavior from Gorillas)

1.    The camp in Tanzania was considered 3 perhaps 4 stars, not 5 stars.  

·         When creating his itinerary, we discussed his budget with him and *clearly* explained that he would need a higher budget to get 5 star every night.   This camp is a solid 4-star from our long experience and a very good value.  The client was given the option to cut out days to lower the budget an up the quality which he declined.

2.    We failed to see gorillas.

·         This is extremely unfortunate, and we are sorry to hear this.  While the vast majority of visitors do see gorillas on their gorilla treks, we cannot actually guarantee that clients will see gorillas. They are wild animals in remote mountainous forests. In this case the Silver back kidnapped a female from an un-habituated family so all the Gorillas were very nervous that day. We gave the client the option to buy a second permit before his trip as we recommend booking two days of gorilla trekking in order to ensure the best gorilla viewing.  They declined to do this.  

3.    Our flight was delayed from Johannesburg to Kenya.

·         While we cannot be held responsible for international flight delays, it is unfortunate that the clients were not notified of the flight cancellation and subsequent four hour delay. The airline also never notified us beforehand.  However, our team on the ground in Tanzania a was able to adapt to the situation and meet them in Tanzania  the moment their flight finally touched down in Arusha.  We are looking into why Kenya Airways a did not notify anyone and why the flight was cancelled.  I think Air Kenya’s lack of communication was unreasonable, and we have filed a complaint with them.

4.    Our flight from Mara North Airstrip to Nairobi was delayed by one hour. 

·         Again, we cannot control the exact timing of bush plane flights.  These are small planes (anywhere from 4 to 20 seats) landing at very small airstrips and travel schedules can change based on things outside of anyone’s control such as weather, air traffic control, etc.  However, our ground team did everything in their power to rush our clients to the Nairobi airport for their flight to Entebbe.  They took a special bypass road to avoid traffic. They checked the clients in online, and they printed their boarding passes ahead of time so as to save time at the airport.  Even with all of the delays, our ground team got them to the airport exactly one hour before their flight, which is rushed but not unreasonable.

4.   There was no attempt to get our luggage from the Mara North flight expeditiously

·         It is true Air Kenya had several delayed flights and were slow unloading bags.  However we are absolutely not authorized to go to the tarmac and pick up luggage for clients directly from the plane. It would be illegal.