Blue Crane Safaris Namibia
- Office In:
- Size:
- 10-20 employees (Founded in 2010)
- Member Of:
- NTB & TOSCO
- Tour Types:
- Mid-range & luxury tours with set start dates and a fixed itinerary
- Destinations:
- Price Range:
- $137 to $1,093 per person per day (USD, excl. int'l flights)
Your request will be sent directly to the operator
If preferred, you can contact the operator directly
Reviews
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Email Karen D | 65+ years of age | Experience level: 2-5 safaris
I highly recommend Blue Crane if you are considering a Namibia safari.
Blue Crane’s safari guides were the best! They made sure everything was perfect. Great driving skills, organized, always put us in the best position to get an amazing photo and the safari vehicles were clean, comfortable and air conditioned. Their knowledge of the animals was informative and interesting. They were just fun to travel with! If I ever am fortunate enough to visit beautiful Namibia again I will definitely go with Blue Crane! Highly recommend them.
Fantastic personal service from the best tour operator out there!
We went on a personal winged safari in Namibia for two weeks in August 2023. Derek Jacobs, the owner of Blue Crane, is everything you would want in a tour provider. First, he and I worked together to choose our locations and lodges. He is flexible, patient, and informative. The tour itself was fantastic, with the exception of Hoodia Desert Lodge, which Derek is no longer using. Derek keeps in timely contact with his clients, both before and during the trip. He goes out of his way for you and really cares about you and your needs. For example, the dates of our Botswana and Namibia tours accidentally overlapped. Though the oversight was both of our faults, Derek took complete responsibility, reordered the dates on our lodges, and paid the extra charges himself. THAT is impressive, but that is Derek. Likewise, he extended himself and offered personal services on two other instances when I changed gears on him. Blue Crane Safaris is an impressive, top notch safari provider run by a top notch guy. I cannot recommend him and Blue Crane highly enough.
Email Christine | 65+ years of age | Experience level: first safari
Wonderful way to see Namibia and surrounding countries.
Our drivers/guides (Sammy and Frank) could not have been more helpful. The vehicles were comfortable and we felt very safe with them in charge. The guides were very knowledgeable about the country and personally were very accommodating with our private tour which included 14 family members aged 5-65. We could not have asked for more in the choices of accommodation and the supply of food!
Derek and his team could not have organised or executed our individualised trip any better.
From the very beginning of planning our trip, Derek responded to every little query and followed up very quickly.
We were travelling with three generations and our guides, Sammy and Frank, were willing to go above and beyond in every way to make our trip run smoothly. Every request was met with a smile and special interests in the country were accommodated.
The vehicles were always kept very clean, despite the omnipresent dust. As a nervous passenger, I always felt extremely safe with both Sammy and Frank. They handled all driving conditions very safely.
We all learned so much about Namibia - the history, people, animals, landscape and even the stars - from our knowledgeable guides. Our little ones couldn't believe there was so much sand to play in! The trip ended with seeing a pride of lions enjoying their breakfast. What other guides could organise such a finale??? :)
Blue Crane Safaris are professional and caring from the initial stages of planning to farewelling us at the airport. They could not have provided an any better experience. Namibia is a truly beautiful and interesting country to visit. Thankyou Derek and your team for a wonderful trip.
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Email Veronika Khariv | 35-50 years of age | Experience level: first safari
Dependable, friendly, and accommodating!
Highly recommend Blue Crane Safaris Namibia! I contacted them about a year before our planned trip to help book a 2-week self-drive of Namibia. Derek was immediately responsive to my inquiry and we quickly began planning our trip over email. I provided my budget, areas of interest, and lodges of interest, and Derek helped me plan a wonderful trip that spoke to all of my needs. He was very attentive and accommodating to all of my questions and requests. Upon arrival to Namibia, we were greeted by the Blue Crane team who picked us up from the airport. They were extremely warm and friendly, and took the time to explain to us how the car operated and even drove us to a grocery store for a supply pick up! They also put all our lodges in the gps so that we were ready to go! The gps was extremely helpful because of the remote areas we were in. Throughout our trip, Blue Crane constantly checked in with us on whatsapp to ensure we were settling in ok and keeping us up to date on any scheduled tours. There was a surprise sandstorm at the end of our trip that resulted in one of our lodgings cancelling our stay because of damage to their property. Blue Crane quickly stepped in and helped us find an alterative, easing our stress. All of the lodges we stayed in exceeded our expectations as did the excursions we booked. For a self-drive, we feel that Blue Crane went above and beyond to ensure we had an enjoyable trip!
CH
Email Tiffany | 20-35 years of age | Experience level: first safari
Reliable, professional, well organized
I had a wonderful time on this trip. Loved every part of it. Marcus, my guide, was incredible. Super professional, knowledgeable and funny at the same time. He took really good care of me. And he has eagle eyes. We were lucky to see so many animals. Lucky enough to see the leopard.
As Namibia is a big country, you should be prepared for long drives.
I really appreciate the high standards and reliability of this company. Thanks for this incredible experience.
Email K & R | 50-65 years of age | Experience level: 2-5 safaris
Must Do Trip!
My husband and I did a private 11 day tour with Bluecrane Safaris and we just had a marvellous time! We were in communication with Derek for a couple of months with planning etc and the emails were always very prompt and accommodating to our needs and timelines. Sidney was our driver and guide for the 11 days and we just had the best time. He was an excellent driver and always considered his passengers, and we had a great vehicle for the trip. He had great knowledge about Namibia, the people, places and history and shared lots of information with us. There was always lots of chat and jokes in the car for our whole trip. We saw the most amazing scenery, animals and people. We would highly recommend using the services of Bluecrane and we will be recommending this to our friends as a must do trip! Thanks Sidney and Derek - you made it a most memorable holiday and one of our best!
SG
Email Wan | 50-65 years of age | Experience level: first safari
Caring, Reliable, Friendly and Professional
We had an amazing 19days self drive trip in Namibia. Whole trip was very well planned and organised. Derek and his team provided notes from the route to take , how long the journey/ drive would take and any stops along the way which are worth dropping by. They tracked our journey to ensure our safety and are always on hand to response to any queries we had along the way as well giving. We would definitely be using Blue Safari again and would recommend Derek and his team to anyone who is planning a trip to the wilderness
Varied highlights of Namibia
We booked this tour last minute. Blue Crane Safaris was great, from the communication to the planning to arrival and departure. And the pricing was fair. I can't say enough great things about John, our tour guide. He went out of his way to check that we were enjoying our safari. He was knowledgeable, professional, fun, and friendly. While some unexpected, minor complications arose out of his control, he was quick and resourceful to get us back on track. The food was repetitive at times, and this has more to do with the lodges than Blue Crane. In late January/early February (wet season) the animals are apparently not as visible, but we still got to see many. This safari was an excellent way to see the highlights of Namibia with little planning on our part. I wish we had more time to spend at the lodges just relaxing. Highly recommended!
Email David Findley | 65+ years of age | Experience level: over 5 safaris
First time trip to Namibia
We were a party of two couples travelling to Namibia for the first time and wanted to take a 19-day self-drive trip throughout Namibia utilising a number of lodges along the journey. After a lot of research and good references, we selected BLUE CRANE SAFARIS. They are a small independent company based based in the capital, Windhoek. We initially interacted with their owner, Derek James who was always informative and responsive to our questions, enabling us to plan an itinerary and route which would meet our budget and moreover provide a wide impression of this stunning country along with its incredible wildlife.
The overall service and support of BLUE CRANE was superb.... we were met at the airport and spent our first evening in Windhoek, where we met the team including Jamie, Petrina and Eperfrans. Jamie diligently went over the itinerary and logistics of our new adventure, all very efficient and reassuring before we went to the vehicle. We used a Toyota HILUX 4x4 vehicle with two spare tyres. Eperfrans went over the spare removal and replacement plus showed us the jack operations as well as the air pressure (required for inflating/deflating tyres on occasion dependant upon terrain). Jamie explained the vehicle was fitted with a tracking device so that they could see where we were on our journey. Must admit that provides a level of reassurance as the country is pretty large and unpopulated in places so it was nice to know they were keeping an eye on us, so to speak. Jamie had also preloaded all of our lodges into the Garmin SatNav...
We also had both Jamie and Dereks numbers and were connected with them on WhatsApp. Quite a useful feature in hindsight and we interacted with them on occasions when we needed to for advice or pre-booking of forthcoming events which they did without issue and were extremely efficient. Their goal was definitely to ensure we had a great holiday!
At the end of the trip we finally got to meet Derek in person, whowanted to know our highlights and of course any recommendations or improvements we could suggest. Our party all agreed that we were hugely impressed with them and thanked them all. A great team and I would hugely recommend them. We are actually already planning a return to Africa next year and working with BLUE CRANE to visit Botswana, another territory that they also cover....
Thanks again to Derek and his team for helping us have one of the most enjoyable and memorable holidays
David & Cheng