Tours by Locals (aka Kiliholidays)

I would advise you not to book this company. Seriously, you'll thank me later.

We booked a 4 night budget safari to see the Serengeti, Ngorogoro Crater, and Lake Manyara. While the wildlife did not disappoint (thanks to our freelance drivers, who were excellent guides), the rest of the experience was pretty awful.

We got quotes from a bunch of different safari operators and Kiliholidays came in the cheapest. This should have been a red flag, but we are broke grad students so we decided to hire them. Unfortunately, we got what we paid for.

The vehicles were in a sorry state of disrepair and one of them lost a wheel - twice. The bolts were rusted and after hitting a big bump, the wheel would tear loose and bounce off into the bush. Instead of getting new bolts to fix the wheel, the drivers simply borrowed bolts from other wheels. We saw a couple vehicles from other tour operators get flat tires, but no one else on the road had a wheel come flying off.

We also had some customer service issues with the company owner, Mack. You may have noticed that he has written responses to the other bad reviews from our group (there were 8 of us total).

Feel free to read his responses, but as you do, remember that this is how he would talk to you if you had an issue on safari with his company. It's a lot of blathering and blame shifting, which is really not what you want to deal with when you're totally dependent on your tour operator and just trying to have an enjoyable vacation with friends.

In summary - we felt unsafe in the vans and we felt that Mack took advantage of the fact that we were (stupid American) tourists, dependent on Kiliholidays for food, shelter, and transportation. Don't make the same mistake we did - book with someone else!