PL
20-35 years of age | Experience level: first safari
Terrible!
It was terrbile experience. I missed my flight from Nairobii to Kilimanjaro. I was trying to contact anybody from AfriGalaxy on hotlines (and sms and e-mail), but nobody answered (other turist did not have any problems with their companies). There was no contact with the company, only few days later they... asked me where I am. I paid a deposit, but they did not want to return it. Do not travel with AfriGalaxy!
US
20-35 years of age | Experience level: first safari
Avoid this company at all costs
I recently did a 4-day Safari with World Tours and Safari in the Serengeti and Ngorogoro Crater. It was a once in a lifetime experience that this company continually tried to sabotage. I booked three months in advance to go to Tarangire, Serengeti, and Ngorogoro. When I arrived in Arusha, the manager Richard changed my itinerary so I never made it to Tarangire. Then, he tried to cut my Safari short by one day so we could drive a separate party to the airport. When confronted after the trip with these complaints, Richard was rude to myself and my family. He never even addressed our concerns as we attempted to talk to him in a calm manner. I later found out he suspended the driver for our trip, who was by far the highlight of the trip and pleasure to be around.
If you are looking to book a safari, just avoid this company. There are plenty of great companies out there operating similar safaris that there is no need to deal with Richard and the hassle of World Tours and Safaris.
IT
35-50 years of age | Experience level: over 5 safaris
Terrible
On the fourth day, when we came away from the masi mara I saw that the driver did not come out of the gate by which we entered, he made a very long ride in the mountains, at least three times the way he should have done, we lost a lot of time .
In the middle of the road told us if we could come up with the wife, we said that was fine.
At one point it was stopped at a checkpoint of the tickets, gave our ticket to the ranger and the driver did not wait for the ranger give back the ticket, he left very quickly.
After about 20 minutes by road stopped in a village and came down from the bus.
While we waited Jackson arrived a ranger and when jacksone back talked a bit with him, then the ranger climbed on the bus with us and made us go back to the point of checking tickets. I asked what the problem was and the ranger said he had to ask questions to Jackson.
the driver came down and it was a long time talking in the office.
While we waited, the ranger came up to me and my wife and asked us how many game drive we did.
I said the truth, 5 game drive, the ranger was surprised and asked me to explain when we made them. I explained what days we did the 5 gamedrive, the ranger asked me how many nights we slept all'Ashnil and I put 3 nights.
At this point, Jackson has returned very angry and menacing tone told me that I had not done as he had said, to say only one day.
I understood that the problem was in the park tickets and I put that I have paid for 3 nights and that was his problem.
The driver is back with the ranger's office and after a while came back and we left.
We lost a lot of time, my wife and I were very scared and did not know what to do. We had lost all faith in Jackson and we wanted to come down and let us return to Nairobi by a taxi.
We decided to continue because the driver was calmer, he drove very fast to recover the lost time.
At Lake Nakuru did his wife get off the bus and arrived at the park after 17.00
It 'was a very bad experience, my wife and I have had a lot of fear and we have lost all faith. We lost a day of safari. We had to get to lake nakuru for lunch and we arrived in the evening before sunset. There you have cheated and deceived.
ES
35-50 years of age
Unprofessional & Liars
We booked a 10-day safari tour of the North including the main National Parks and a trekking from Empakai to Lake Natron. The very first day our rusty 4x4 had to be fixed. Ok. No problem. That happens. It was going to be fixed the same day. Next day we departed very late cause it had not been repaired. We arrive to campsite. Rain. Water seeped into our tents so our sleeping bags, mattresses got soaked... We complained and they were not changed until the 4th night!!! Meanwhile, more delays... We complained to the big boss (Mr. Nasoro - sorry if the spelling is wrong) for the delays. He'll do his best to solve it blah blah blah... Next day we arrive to Serengeti NP. Driver says he has not enough money to pay the entrance. Ok. Call your boss to solve it. He says that we have to pay ourselves. Same happen with Ngorongoro entrance. We spent more than 1 hour for the Boss to solve the problem. We paid. Later we found that it was intentional cause we have arranged with him that we will pay a little amount at the end of the trip. As you can imagine, that amount was exactly the money that we paid at Serengeti & Ngorongoro. So the thing is that we complain about the delays and the following days he creates a new problem that make us waste even more time. We were really furious. As for the trek, it was so badly organized that we had to pay to rescue part of their own stuff (cook, cooking material, etc...). We missed Lake Natron (the driver that had to pick us up to take us there was delayed..). We used some local guides for the trek. Really nice people. They were not getting paid by our staff. We almost had a fight so they got paid. They found the money to pay them miraculously. We did not trust them since we knew they were all liars. That last day, the Big Boss did not appear. He said he was in Dar. We complained about the money that we paid: the rescue of the staff, food expenses since cook and food were in the middle of nowhere... obviously he refused to pay us back. Not a single apologize. Later, the same staff, ashamed, told us that he was at home...
As you can see, we can't recommend this company. They made our trip a nightmare. Everyday there were delays and one lie after the other... And the way they treated the local guides was degrading.
US
20-35 years of age | Experience level: over 5 safaris
Dishonest Management
It's a long story, but in summation we paid extra to stay in nicer accommodations but were taken to another location without being told or asked. We had to confront the company before they would admit the mistake. Management made multiple excuses with a story that changed each time then promised a refund for the difference between the two places. We contacted the company multiple times for this refund and have yet to receive anything.
At the end of the day, there are so many great safari companies, why use one that you can't trust?
Very bad experience with Elkan Safaris
After paying upfront for a certain itinerary, the manager of the company (and I believe in fact sole employee as well) tried to change the itinerary and duration of the trip without any logic explanation
upon arrival at Serengeti Gate, we learnt that the funds to pay permits where not available. Of course, the operator lied to us saying that this was due to a system failure and ask if we could do the "favor" of paying for the entrance again and get a refund from him after finishing the safari. After 3 hours assessing options at the very gate (and subsequently wasting the time that was scheduled for safari that day), we have decided to pay only for one day, without any certainty that the day after the operator would not be coming up with the same request
thanks to the manager of the driver (a subcontractor), we could finish our safari without major incidents, apart from the inconvenience of having to turn up every single day (of a total of 5) to the offices to extend the permit as the moneys we had paid in advance were never deposited as they should have been
back to Arusha, the manager of Elkan Safaris tried even not to pay the money he owed us and we had to threaten him with reporting to the police to get our money back, which we finally did some 3 hours before going back to our homeland
I am not wasting my time trying to sort out whether all this behaviour was ill-intentioned or simply careless, all I can say is that I strongly recommend avoiding the services of this tour operator if you want to save yourselves some headaches
It was a very bad trip because John Bakari. A very good trip because Cliff Gustaff Tety.
We are just coming back from a travel in Tanzania. Our stay started on 23/10/2014 up to 02/11/2014. The tour organizer was John Bakari,. He was chosen because being French speaking, because known by the Belgian group leader since many years . He is the owner of the agency "Voyage Africain" based in Arusha.
Our group that was consisting in six people was victim of a large swindle. An advance of 60% of the total amount was paid on Bakari's bank account during the month of January 2014. The balance would be paid below the board on the 24/10/2014. When still in Belgium, in spite of the reiterated requests of our group leader, John Bakari never provided us any invoice. We realized, gradually, that nothing of what was envisaged was organized, nothing was booked. On the spot, John Bakari tapped us more money. He promised to reimburse this loan at our return to Arusha. Conclusion: the 13.200€ paid by the members of our group for this travel of 10 days disappeared.
We were lucky in our misfortune, to become acquainted with Cliff Gustaff Tety, guide certified and driver. He enabled us to carry out the activities foreseen in our circuit. During the circuit he was in communication with the wife of John Bakari for the payment of the invoices related with these activities. Christina, John Bakari's wife, always claimed that her husband would pay any invoice. Cliff Tety went thus guaranteeing the payment since he had the word of the wife of John Bakari. He went guaranteeing at the time of our passage in the national park of Mahale. Again he went guaranteeing the payment for the hiring of the boat which transferred us from Mahale to Kigoma. For our stay at the Arumeru River Lodge, again he spoke in favour of our cause. At the airport of Kilimandjaro at Arusha, the day of our return towards Europe/Belgium, agents of the national parks (TANAPA) were waiting us requiring us to pay the pending invoices. Even if they didn't have any right to do so, they tried to block us in Tanzania. They let to us go only thirty minutes before the take-off apparently convinced by the arguments of Cliff and those of Bernard, the group leader. Later, when the Europeans were gone we were informed that Cliff was arrested and imprisoned in Kigoma. Up to now we don't know why. Blackmail, keeping an hostage, and so on...
Finally John Bakari swindled us for more than €13.200. We lodged a complaint.
I did only deliver to you a very short outline of our adventure. So if there are candidates who envisaged to go to Tanzania, don't hesitate in contacting me on Facebook for more details.
Well, not what we expected
We closed our booking a few days earlier with kanut. Talked on the phone and he seemed really nice. First of all the driver- lynus was terrible. He was angry and rude most of the time. On the way to the first park he almost fell asleep on the wheel several times. On the way it started raining and the rain got in to the jeep. When we told him he just got mad and said it's not his fault. The cook that came with him was an 18 years old boy who didn’t knew how to cook anything. On the second day our driver got into a fight with another driver that almost got violent. All and all we enjoyed our safari but not thank to kanut safari but because it was beautiful.
IT
Very unpleasant!
It has been a terrible experience with KetSafari Tour.
The only thing they seemed to want is your money and for the rest they didn't care. And the option we had chosen was not even so cheap.
We paid to spend more than a week sitting on a van everyday and travelling for more than 9 hours per day which was a boring and tiring experience and didn't worth the money paid. Once at the lodges what we were doing was sitting in the van (again!) for 2/3 hours to go out on safari with the most silent and speechless driver. On top of this it was even more irritating that we haven't seen much. I know that the safari experience is not like being in a zoo and you cannot predict wether you will see some animals or not but every time once back to the lodges there were bunches of people excited as they have seen many of the big five (especially the most difficult ones). And it was clear that it wasn't only luck but definitely they had a professional driver.
This made us upset all the time. The only 2 sentences our driver was able to say were that we had plenty of time and places to visit so we would have seen something and also he was begging us to invest money on him so we could buy him a new van and he could start his own business!
On the last day, on the way back we refused to stop for lunch despite it was already paid as we were looking forward to end that pain that was making us feeling SO sick!
US
20-35 years of age | Experience level: 2-5 safaris
Fraudulent company
We booked our trip with David and Goliath as well in late Aug early September 2014, and had a very similar experience to the other reviews here. I looked for reviews on this comany before booking and seemed like they had gotten decent reviews (atleast for Kili treks). We had to pay 300 dollars more after landing in Arusha otherwise the company boss David Bungama refused to start the safari. They sent us official looking itineraries with hotel information. But the actual hotels we were put up in were way cheaper and of inferior quality. He promised to pay us back but there was always an excuse to not do so. We had even booked a Zanzibar leg through him, but on checking into the hotel in Zanzibar, we found out he had not paid our hotel bill. We had to settle the matter by not just paying the hotel bill all over again, but having to endure a lot of unpleasantness from the local tour operator and hotel staff. We spent a lot of money in arranging this trip, and it turned out to be a disaster because of the tour company we chose.
The sotry I get from David Bungama is he had hired someone to set up his websites, who had then proceeded to hack into his safaribooking website and then sign up customers impersonating David, and then taken the money and absconded.
Even though I trouble believing his story completely, i gave him the benefit of the doubt, and entertained the possibility that he was merely incompetent and a little guillible in allowing another person to handle his website and use his bank acocunt for wire transfers. But I just read one of the recent reviews from another customers around the same time, and it appears he uses these kind of tactics regularly. Whatever the truth, there are plenty of other companies offering similar tours with much better service, so dont bother risking an expensive trip like this to such a company, they are either dishonest or incompetent. And if others have had a bad experience with him as well, please post your experiences as well, so future tourists do not get their trips ruined. If you wish you may also get in touch with me, as I m planning to report this matter to the authorities, and would make a much stronger case if there are multiple parties reporting such fraudulent behavior.