Selous Explorer

8 amazing days full of animal sights, nice experiences and excellent food!

My boyfriend and I did an 8-day safari with Selous Explorer and can only recommend booking with them. Belonging to the group of spontaneous travellers, we didn't book neither our flights nor the actual safari 6 months in advance like - as we learned - other people seem to do. Nevertheless, we wanted to get a first quote before we started our trip and requested prices with several safari companies some days in advance. Selous Explorer was one of the quickest to reply and additionally one of the most responsive and competitive ones. They offered the exact trip we were looking for and unlike most others operators in the perfect and most efficient order to maximise game driving: Mikumi National Park, Ruaha National Park and Selous Game Reserve.

We decided to book with Selous and texted the owner, Norbert, one day before we arrived in Dar-es-Salaam. During the flight to Tanzania I was afraid maybe this was too short notice and we will have to wait in Dar until the start of the safari. Instead we were picked up at the airport by a friend of Norbert against no extra charge. But this was not the only positive surprise that day when also our driver, Nestor, stopped by at our hotel later that day in order to welcome us and introduce himself. The next morning, we were picked up a 100% in time by Nestor and our personal cook, Benson - a man full of smiles and good spirit!

We could realise on the first Game Drive that our driver guide Nestor is on of the better and experienced ones: While all the others decided to leave a scene after some minutes, we got to see a lion hunt exclusively by our own on 10 meters distance. We learned a lot from Nestor and got to see as many scenes and animal as possible. Unfortunately, as it turned out traveling in December Ruaha is not at its best as the is rainy season has already progressed and a lot of animals are spread throughout the park. But still, Nestor did his very best and showed a lot of endurance while driving us through the whole park from a to z in order to go to all animal’s territories. Wildlife highlights certainly include numerous lion hunts, lions and giraffe mating, baby lion cups, a group of 15 wild dogs and countless elephants, giraffes, zebras and hippos.

Benson, our cook, made sure that we gained 3 kilos during 8 days as he was preparing amazing food every day but thanks to him we got to know some traditional Tanzanian recipes. In Mikumi and in Ruaha we stayed within the Park sleeping with lions, elephants and giraffes. The bandas and camps were of good standard with own bath rooms and mosquito nets. Unfortunately, in Selous we stays outside of the park but the camp was really nice.

Only one small recommendation: Ask for both the Boat and Walking Safari in Selous to be swapped against extra game drive. Both our conducted outside of the actual Game Reserve and you cannot see much besides birds and lizards. This is not operator specific however.

Altogether we can only recommend to book with Selous Explorer.