Trans Kibo Travels

Very satisfied with the service!

We booked Kilimanjaro and Safari with Trans Kibo.

A few months ago I started contacting Trans Kibo and other trekking agencies. Thomas is very patient at my emails and all replies are instant. Guides they arranged for climb are professional and helpful. All 5 of us summit. After climb Abraham came to hotel to book safari for us. It was great!

Quote is very competitive and service meets our expectation. I'll recommend Trans Kibo to my friends for sure.

GoooD

My English is not great, sorry.
Everyone was great. Including chief, guide, cooker and porters).
I would remember their kindness.
Really appreciate this tour.
Bye friends!

We came to this operator by searching the internet who recommended it as one of the cheapest. We had, however an inconvenience when we arrived in Tanzania and they told us that they had sent us a table service with prices lagged by one year. In short, we had to renegotiate the value of services safari at the last minute. However, the opportunity to enjoy four days of Safari in very good infrastructure provided by Transkibo, Seronera Wildlife Lodge and Ngorongoro Wildlife Lodge was undoubtedly valuable and rewarding experience.

Did not fullfill our expectations and what we have booked

We were 2 persons and booked 3 days hiking Mt. Meru and 4 days safari for approx. USD 1500 each person.

Every day we had discussions with the guides or persons who conducted the tours. They wanted too high tips for average or under average services. We had acrid discussions about the tips.

In our mentally and physically worst moment on Mt. Meru on the summit day when we slept only 3 hours, climbed 1300 vertical meters up to 4500m and 1300 down, had still another 2000 vertical meters down towards us and BEFORE we got a meal, they asked us how about the tipping and if we already know their tipping guidelines and if we now could give the tips.

On safari, we booked 2 days Serengeti, 1 day Ngorongoro and 1 Tarangire National Park. The truth is, you only get half of these days because the rest of these days is travel time to the next destination or camping site. Our guide did not explain anything. Just nothing. He just drove the car and did no else "guiding service". But afterwards, he expected a high tip.

Transkibo has subcontracted the whole safari tour, meaning personnel of a different safari company or freelancer conduct the safari guides. But these persons don't have a strong connection to the company we have booked (transkibo) which is why they do not care about providing good services.

The truth is Tanzania is not a backpacking country. The country is spoiled of rich tourists who spent a lot of money to get carried on Kilimandjaro with chairs and portable toilets.

The skeleton outline is there... you see animals, but in my opinion the service is pretty bad

So I will start this review with you will see a lot of animals. It has nothing to do with the guides they use really, the route they take never go far off the beaten path and once a guide finds something interesting all the other landcruisers and landrovers will soon be there. Just the same, by going to these areas you will see some amazing things. I would just advise you use another company. This group incorporates other names, perhaps in an effort to disperse bad reviews around to different groups. MJ safaris is one group that uses or combines with Trans Kibo.

This really regards the service provided by the company. It was a budget safari so initially I chalked up most of what you are about to read as related to that. However, on meeting several other people who took budget tours from Arusha it became very clear the service was sub-par even for a budget tour.
1. Our guide was non-talkative. He did not point out many animals and it took us prompting him to get him to speak. There were other passengers who were rude to him but he did not talk much.
2. The food was the same for four people as it was for two people. We noticed this cause two of us were alone the last day and the food was the same and much more filling. Multiple times we were hungry in between meals those first two days.
3. The big deal was how much we waited. We waited for many hours to enter the park with excuses like our bank is not transferring money, our credit card is not working still. This also applied to leaving one of the campsites. We waited every morning while other tours left. We were regularly the first to arrive in the afternoon and the last to leave in the morning. This amounted to at least 5-6 hours less drive time for a four day tour then other budget operators.

All in all, just really poor service. When a component of your tour is a bank, and they consistently mess up, the answer is not to blame them but find another group who doesn't F-up all the time.

After I contacted my operator and never received any response. So now I'll just recite my story here.