Trip Advisor Africa Safaris
Trip Advisor Africa Safaris
- Located In:
- Size:
- 10-20 employees (Founded in 2012)
- Tour Types:
- Short mid-range tours (½ to 3 days)
- Destinations:
- Price Range:
- $100 to $300 per person per day (USD, excl. int'l flights)
Reviews
HK
Email Chris | 50-65 years of age | Experience level: first safari
12-day Kenya Tanzania Tour
General speaking, the tour is good and we see many animials although there is problem in the arrangement of accommodation in Tanzania. .
Email D Seifert | 20-35 years of age | Experience level: first safari
Excellent four-day safari in Masai Mara, Naivasha and Lake Nakuru
This was an excellent safari, and every part of it was very well organised. I saw more wild animals than I could have imagined, and our drivers were extremely good. The only small complication arose before the start of the trip, when I was charged an unusually large transaction fee on my initial payment. This aspect could perhaps be improved upon, but otherwise it was a very pleasant experience.
US
Email Will | 50-65 years of age | Experience level: first safari
Four night package to Amboselli, Tsavo West and Tsavo East.
We booked our trip within 45 days of departing. While Vincent (the operator) was difficult to understand, he made up for with a stellar trip. I'm from America and I speak no other foreign language, and admire those that to. While not fluent in English, we decided emailing and texting would be best for both parties.
The company demanded only a wire transfer for a deposit. I think that in this day and age of credit cards, spending $80 wire fees is ridiculous, but I wanted to support a small business and begrudgingly wired the money and paid the fee. During our conversation, I clearly communicated that I will not be carrying $4,000 in cash and that my party would pay the balance with credit cards upon arrival. Upon arrival, this was met with reluctance by Vincent and mandated a trip back to Nairobi (out of the way by two hours with traffic) to meet his office manager that had a mobile unit for authorizing credit cards. Vincent could have had that with him when he met us, saving all of us two hours of our lives and more importantly, our vacation.
Once we got that out of the way, we met our driver and our guide, Lawi and we were on our way Amboseli. Lawi is a wonderful man and we enjoyed him immensely. After we checked into our accommodations at Amboseli, we went out on our first outing into the park. The first night we experienced an entire family of elephants near a small lake, that had a mother and baby hippo. We were delighted seeing that. We also experienced giraffe, impalas, gazelles, baboons and other exotic creatures. L
Lawi wanted to get us back to the lodge prior to dark, so we could eat dinner. Our group couldn't care less about eating timely or at all for that matter, if it meant sacrificing time looking for animals. That was met with resistance from Lawi. That issue also came up in the morning. We stayed 2o minutes from the park entrance and wanted to meet at 6:00. Lawi insisted we not leave prior to 6:30, but we settled on 6:15. The sun rose at 6:30 and by the time we got to the animals, the sun had been up for 30 minutes and we missed the best light of the day for our photography. However, once there we found a pride of lions coming across the savannah. Shortly after getting there, the lions continued coming directly toward us and we got amazing photographs of these magnificent animals. They crossed the road thirty feet in front of us and settle in a shadow with Mount Kilimanjaro directly behind them. It made an incredible photograph, when a lioness turned her head and looked directly at us with zebra and gazelles in the background.
Shortly after the lions went out of view, we saw a family of elephants again coming right at us. Lawi’s lack of understanding of photography became evident. While we could have easily stopped before the elephant and on the sunny side of them, Lawi continued past them and stopped the truck on the dark side of the animals. I was furious! Poor Lawi did not understand what he had done and after calming down, I conveyed the importance of being on the bright side of the animal, if at all possible, especially in hours immediately after dawn and before dusk. I’m not certain he understood why that was important, but he became vigilant at asking where he would like us to stop and that forged a great relationship with him for the rest of the trip.
After the magic of the morning resided, we went back to the lodge, cleaned up, ate breakfast and traveled on to Tsavo West. The drive there was remarkable with the scenery. It was hilly and heavily vegetated and while very scenic, it made seeing animals very difficult. We stayed at a phenomenal lodge at Tsavo West and it had a watering hole right of the back patio with a back drop of gorgeous landscapes. When we first arrived, an elephant was drinking water there along with many gazelles, waterbucks and zebra. We headed out that afternoon to view animals with little luck. The vegetation was just too thick to catch a glimpse of very many animals. Another outing in the morning yielded similar results, but it was breathtaking scenery. Then, it was on to Tsavo East after the morning drive.
Tsavo East is near the town of Voi and one must navigate its streets to arrive at the entrance to the national park. Voi was an interesting town where trash was simply thrown out and would land on public streets. It didn’t seem unusual at all to the people that lived there. Hundreds, maybe thousands of goats roamed the town and seemed to sanitize the trash as evidence of the fat goats, but I digress.
On our way to our lodge, there was no shortage of wildlife, we saw many bull elephants by themselves, many giraffes (twiga in Swahili). The accommodations were first rate again and we checked-in and then started our next drive. This time we went along a river where we witnessed many elephant families and all got great shots of them. We also experienced vervet monkies, baboons, along with many other species and witness babies as well.
After leaving Tsavo East, we took the highway to Mombasa where we said our goodbyes to Lawi and checked into a hotel there.
Overall, I thought Trip Advisor Africa Safaris served us well and I would book with them again.
IN
Email Mohammed Salman Bijlee | 20-35 years of age | Experience level: first safari
Comfortable arrangement to Serengeti!
We booked our 4 days safari with Trip Advisor Africa Safaris. Seth Vincent arranged everything as we had asked him to arrange and promptly replied to every email that was sent to him. The airport pick up to drop off was smooth and well arranged. The safari to Tarangire, Serengeti and Ngorongoro was really amazing and well organised. we had a very good driver Ziggy and chef Alifa, both very knowledgeable and amazing cook respectively. Special thanks to director Vincent for arranging a pick up of our lost luggage that arrived couple of days later. It was truly a great help for picking up our lost luggage and keeping it safe until we arrived back from our 4 days safari. Also special thanks to make sure all our requests were fulfilled, like arranging halal food, hotel pick up and drop off,etc. All in all, you can book these guys for your visit to African safari and they will make sure you have a memorable trip with them.
US
Email Sami | 35-50 years of age | Experience level: first safari
Prompt replies
There was a misunderstanding but a one call resolution to Seth resolved it
Arrangement and staff are nice, no worries during our visit.
The owner communicate well with us before we go. Prepare all fit our needs. We join a 8days safari Kenya & Tanzania, plus a day visit to Giraffe Sanctuary & slum. Every thing was good. We also got the magic moments in Masa Mara and Serengeti. Thanks Vincent, Joel & God love.