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
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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.
EE
Email Vladimir | 20-35 years of age | Experience level: first safari
4 day (Tarangire, Serengeti, Ngorongoro) - standard tented safari
Most of things was like they promised.
They meet me at the hotel day before for payments. Next day they pick me up from the hotel (car was 40min late).
4 day tented safari:
- Tarangire. First there was agreement about visiting Lake Manyara NP, but they changed "because most animas migrated to Tarangire", I don't know if that was true, but there was a lot of animals in Tarangire. Night in OK fenced camping site near Lake Manyara.
- Serengeti - not so much animals because of tjhe season (guide sad that most of wildebeest have migrated to Masai Mara). Night in tents in very basic camp inside Serengeti.
- Ngorongoro - more animals than in Serengeti. Night in tents in very basic camp on the rim of Ngorongoro crater. NB! there is cold in camp (+5-10 Celsius at night) and in also in crater before noon.
Our driver Estomi was helpful, drove carefully. Car was old but clean. One day it was broken, and our group was divided between two other cars for half day.
Food and lunchboxes were average.
Company used different cars (6 and 8 seats) and mixed groups between cars. In our car there was from 3 to 8 persons during the game drive.
In conclusion it was good tour for its money.
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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.
Email Tina | 20-35 years of age | Experience level: first safari
4-Day Masai Mara and Lake Nakuru Safari
Initially, correspondence with the company was superb and we had all details about order of locations and accommodation confirmed in October 2019 (we were asked which accommodation we would like to stay at and after specificity were told they were confirmed) I had been emailed with a daily reminder to pay the deposit up until the day I actually paid it, and then I did not hear from the company/ receive a completed itinerary. We next heard from them in February 2020 on the day before our safari only to make sure we had the remaining balance.
On the DAY of the safari, we met up with an employee to pay the balance and were told that the proposed details had been flipped and locations were changed. We did the safari backwards and did not stay at any of the confirmed accommodation that was specified in our initial correspondence. We were in a van and whilst ours did not break down, there were a number of them within the park which did break down.
Despite this, our guide was spectacular!! Eric had extensive knowledge of all the national parks we visited and knew of all animals and their habits. We saw the Big Five as well as a number of different animals; I feel as though we did not miss out on seeing anything.
Eric would break down the course of each day the night before with locations, game drives and time allowances for each activity throughout the day. We also had people in our car that were on shorter safaris, so he had ensured their departures were sorted for all car pooling changes.
Overall, it was a fantastic experience and I loved getting to interact with the other members of our group. If anything, it would be nice if we were notified of changes prior to departure.
Reply from Trip Advisor Africa Safaris
Posted on Feb 24, 2020Jambo Tina,
Thank you very much for wonderful review, it was pleasure saving you during your 4 days stay in Kenya , am looking forward to serve you again in future.
Regards
Seth Vincent
Director
Trip Advisor Africa safaris
Nairobi branch
SG
Email Bhaskaran | 50-65 years of age | Experience level: first safari
Good but can be better ...transparency is the key !
When we decided to experience the much famed African Safari, stumbled upon the online market place “Safari Bookings” which has thousand over African Safari operators offering either standard packages or some of them can customise according to traveller needs. It is quite overwhelming to choose from the list of operators – in spite of applying certain preferences. We wanted to cover Masai Mara, Serengeti, Amboseli, Ngorongoro and Lake Nakuru. We saw the standard packages from 3 operators offering these and one of them was TripAdvisor Africa Safaris. We usually rely Trip Advisor reviews but we couldn’t find any review for “TripAdvisor Africa Safaris” which created a suspicion if this could be a scamster operator. But their itinerary was definitely better than others we compared; while Safari Bookings assured that they do verify the tour operator licenses, they cannot guarantee things cannot go wrong with the operators listed under their wings. So we took a chance with TripAdvisor Safaris as Vincent Seth assured us that we wouldn’t regret taking up a package with them. I should add, we mentally prepared ourselves to expect some disappointments based on the past reviews and hoped we weren’t one of those who had to face severe disappointments. Our 11 nights 12 day (Jul 13 - Jul 24 2019) African Safari in Kenya and Tanzania definitely met our expectations though we there were some items of the itinerary had to be skipped – the distances between the national parks are very large and it is not possible to jam pack so many. We had to skip the baby elephant and welcome dinner at Carnivore on day 1 – this I guess depends on the arrival time. We had to skip the Hells gate national park on day 3 so that we shall be able to reach Masai Mara before the stipulated park closure time. Our major gripe is about the accommodation in Masai Mara – we were put up at Sun Lodge which is very far off from the game viewing areas, though it is located inside the park. While the location of the lodge is exotic, the difficult terrain and the long drive makes it very a very demanding. Contrary to the itinerary we were booked for 3 nights here and we were the only family in the entire lodge – that made us wonder if Sun Lodge was so infamous such that even in peak season no one prefers it. I guess this was booked pretty cheap compared to any other lodge in Masai Mara. But it would be bad on my part if I don’t appreciate the service of the most friendliest staff I ever came across in Africa and the sumptuous dinner they had prepared for us. It would have been perfect if not for the difficult terrain and long travel to the park every day. The game drives in all the national parks were very good; the guides were knowledgeable, pleasant – Jacob in Kenya for Lake Naivasha, Lake Nakuru and Masai Mara; Ezekiel for Serengeti, Ngorongoro, Tarangire and Richard for Amboseli. Lion Hill lodge at Nakuru, Kati-Kati tented camp in Serengeti (best experience of the entire trip and sumptuous dinners), Ngorongoro Wildlife lodge, Amboseli Sopa Lodge were all very good and matched our expectations; again in Tanzania, we had a terrible experience at the Twiga camp site – this was not as per the itinerary and a rundown place; food was not good as well. We were supposed to travel to Tarangire and accommodation was Tarangire Safari Lodge but ended up in this Twiga camp site. The border transfers were smooth with the drivers/guides waiting on time – I was quite apprehensive if things would be smooth after reading some experiences. Overall except for the accommodation mess up in Masai Mara (since it was 3 nights high level of inconvenience) and 1 night at Twiga camp site, we had an excellent gaming experience. I am thankful that Vincent made sure that the gaming drives were good, sent us reasonable drivers/guides and most importantly border transfers were smooth with the drivers waiting there on time to receive us. Vincent Seth seems genuinely interested in improving the quality of tours he offers; he can definitely achieve that provided he tweaks his itinerary not to over promise and to be transparent about the accommodation if in case its different from that of the itinerary. One more vital point is to communicate the agreed itinerary to the drivers/guides and stick to it.
A wonderful experience seeing many animals in a short time
Our tour guide was very knowledgeable about the animals. He treated everyone on safari well. Our tour was made at the last minute & we only had a short time so the tour company was flexible. They offered us a number of options for us to choose from. I loved every minute!
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.
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Email Michael Lee | 65+ years of age | Experience level: 2-5 safaris
Graceport Ecotours Kenya was excellent and very helpful with booking our tour.
Our Driver Guide was Peter Anyona and he was very good. Peter was on time everyday and answered all our questions about the different animals. Although we did not get to see the migration river crossing Peter had us perfectly located had it occurred. I highly recommend Peter for your next safari.
CA
Email Julia | 20-35 years of age | Experience level: first safari
Trip itself was wonderful
Overall we had a great experience, and definitely feel we got good value for the price we paid. I can't say much about the booking process, as I wasn't really involved. I did find the
payment method a bit odd, as I was told simply to "carry cash" the first morning, and then it turned out the idea was that we carried $3000 USD to make the payment. It worked out with visa, but cost extra money and time on the first morning.
The only other issue we ran into was that the itinerary we were given was completely unrealistic on a few of the days (meaning we weren't able to see/do all the things we had expected). It would turn out that there were 10+ hours of driving (which in itself we didn't mind), but the itinerary had said there would be a morning game drive/visiting of various sites etc but realistically there was zero time for that.
Other than these things we had a wonderful experience! Seth arranged for us to see all the parks we asked for, and we were able to stick to our budget. Our guide in Kenya, Ruben, was so kind and knowledgable and wanted to make sure we had a great trip! He was excellent at his job, and we were so happy with him as our guide. He went out of his way for us, and we feel very lucky to have had him take us through Kenya. We also had a great guide in Tanzania, Salim, who was equally knowledgeable and managed to find some very impressive animals for us!
I would recommend Seth for booking your trip, he delivered on what we asked for an we had an incredible and unforgettable experience! Just be very clear in your communications, and make sure you let him know what things are most important to you (we did this, and had no disappointments when it came to those areas!).