Tanzania Vacation Operation

Worst nightmare

If you are looking for a tour company for your dream tour in Africa, NOT THIS ONE. Run away!

Only if there was the option of negative stars, this company would deserve 10 of them. Travelling with this company was the most horrifying experience, but trusting his owner John was the worst decision we had in life. He was lying to us till the very end of our tour. Never had I want to go home that badly for any vacation.

My husband and I came for our 12 days honeymoon, paid huge amount of money (50% deposit upon booking with them and 50% upon arrival, totally of $5500 USD per person) for everything inclusive and got the worst nightmare in our lives.
We know for sure we are not underpaying them, but they have not been keeping their promises, not even making sure everything on the itinerary were carried out accordingly.

It was a trip including safari at Kenya, safari at Tanzania and beach holiday in Zanzibar, Kenya.

The trip in Kenya was the first nightmare. The owner John, who was helpful and responsive ONLY ONLINE, turned to this disappearing person that never replied to us when we got here. He outsourced the job in Kenya to a local guide called Rufus, whom had never showed up at all. There was no designated person for our 4 days there, different people were responsible for driving us and bringing us around. They changed our itinerary without prior notice. One day, we left early morning towards the safari from Nairobe Kenya. We were promised lunch on route and afternoon safari game drive once we arrived. But that day, we arrived at 2:30pm to the hotel and didn’t have lunch till then. Itinerary also got changed from an afternoon safari game drive to a village visit which was a complete tourist trap and scam to us. They just found some Masai people on motorcycle and picked us up from the lodge, and told us this is the activity we have for the day.
The next day, we had our game drive at Masai Mara, we had to start late because the driver forgot to order lunch boxes from the Lodge the day before (all the drivers just came and took their lunchboxes and went for the game drive right away). We ended up waiting for 60 mins for lunchboxes to be ready.
At the National Park Gate, there were also some ticketing issues which made us wait for another 30 mins for entrance, which was not seen in the other jeeps. The worst was yet to come, Rufus hired a shabby car to drive us 5 hours to the Tanzania border, very terrible condition of the car and very poor road condition. We got stopped by the rangers at the park gate, and even got pulled over by the police because it was an illegal car for driving passengers.

Luckily, the experience in Serengeti National Parks in Tanzania was good, because John happened to have outsourced the work to a responsible and helpful guide called Michael.

Just as we thought the nightmare in Kenya was going to be over. John threw us a surprise again. Right at the time we boarded the plane to Zanzibar from Arusha, John sent us a hand written letter saying he could not pay for our trip at Zanzibar because his staff made a calculation mistake, and requested a top up of $1000 USD per person in order for him to complete our tour in Zanzibar. That was already the 8th day since we have settled out final payment, this whole calculation thing should not have heppened if he had booked everything for us as soon the payment was received. Therefore, we did not believe him. We didn't pay him, and the nighmare extended till the end of our trip.
These are what happened in Zanzibar:

1. He did not arrange transport for us from the airport to the hotel, so we were left stranded and helpless at the airport at 8:30pm at night.
2. He did not even book the hotel for us that night until our guide in Tanzania Michael helped us to call him. But when we arrived at the hotel, the hotel staff actually asked us to pay the hotel by ourselves. We refused and after negotiation with John, he finally agreed to pay the next day
3. We had to keep asking him for confirmation on the activities written on the itinerary. Eventually, there were 2 days of activities and 1 night of hotel not booked and not paid by him, which include 2 scuba dives ($120 per person), 1 snorkelling tour with dolphins (~$40 USD per person, and 1 night of hotel stay ($230 USD),
4. We had to pay by ourselves the diving we had, which was $250 for 2 persons, and paid $230 for 1 night at the hotel because he stopped replying to our messages. He made a lot of promises, but never came to fulfil them.

We have proof and receipts of everything we had to pay on our own. And we have pictures of his hand written letter.

From our experience this is the worst company you could get, terrible management, untrustworthy and dishonest owner, and all together made our nightmare.