AE
35-50 years of age | Experience level: first safari
Kenya Safari in August 2025
We booked a 6-day, 5-night Kenya safari for August 2025. We compared multiple providers and ultimately chose a high-season safari in Africa.
Itinerary: two nights in Amboseli, one night in Lake Nakuru, and two nights in the Masai Mara.
On June 19th, we paid our deposit.
On June 23rd, we received our first contract update, changing our hotel in Lake Nakuru. Since there were many nearby hotels, I thought it was a good option.
On June 27th, we received our second contract update, also changing our hotel in the Masai Mara. The new hotel was significantly worse than our previous one (Google rating: 3.9 vs. 4.8) and the location wasn't great either.
On July 31st, 10 days before our departure, we received our third contract update, changing our hotel in Amboseli. It was a nightmare. The hotel was like a two-star hotel, and we didn't even have room for our luggage. The location was terrible, two hours from the park entrance, and the road was terrible. Compared to our original hotel, we had to drive an extra three hours to reach the park.
- Our flight arrived at 5:10 AM, but our driver arrived around 8 AM. Our first day's plan was to do an afternoon safari in Amboseli. We needed to get from the airport to the hotel, rest briefly there, and then head to the park. Remember my last comment about the location of the Amboseli hotel! That day was truly terrible day, full day drive and only 1 hour in the park.
- Our contract stated that in the Masai Mara, we would have an afternoon safari on our arrival day, a full-day safari, and a morning safari on our final day. However, we only had a two-day ticket, which allowing us to enter the park only two days. Also, given the hotel's location, our first afternoon safari would only be one or two hours, leaving us unable to enter the park on our final day. We had confirmed this with our driver from the start, and he said we could enter the park on our final day as long as we departed before 10 AM. If we had known this from the beginning, we would have stayed longer in Lake Nakuru (to get more sleep) and skipped the afternoon safari on our first day. We would have planned a longer safari on our final day, as we would have been returning to Nairobi hotel (not airport).
- Hotels play a crucial role in a Kenyan safari, and we changed all our hotels after we paid. But why three stars, and not the worst? Kenya is truly beautiful, and we felt safe upon our return.
CN
65+ years of age | Experience level: 2-5 safaris
Disappointing arrangement
This is a very disappointing trip. The most important purpose of our visit to Tanzania is to see the animal migration of the Mara River. This wish has been explained to the travel agency more than two months in advance. Although we arranged to go to the Mara River for a day to watch the animal migration, it took eight hours to go back and forth from our residence more than 200 kilometers away from the Mara River, which we didn't know in advance. It was already ten o'clock in the morning at the Mara River. After waiting for three hours, the driver drove away and we didn't see anything. Later, we learned that wildebeest crossing the river usually ends before 9 o'clock.
This arrangement is frustrating.
Not recommended.
BO
50-65 years of age | Experience level: first safari
Review about Tarangire National Park by Marcelo Garcia
Didnt see all the animals
20-35 years of age | Experience level: first safari
Amazing and a shambles at the same time.
Our Safari was mid-range so some of our experience may not apply if you are booking Budget or Luxury. I will add that I did also make repeated attempts to reach out to Safari360 after our experience to pass on feedback but never heard back. I don't think they are interested in repeat business.
The Shambles:
On our first day we were told by our guide that we would be collected from our lodge in Arusha at 7am. However by 7.45am we had still heard nothing, and no guide had arrived. We had to ask the front desk at the hotel to call the office for us which they were helpful in doing. They told us someone would come for us soon but it was another half an hour later when another guide arrived who was also taking another group to Tarangire. The plan was for us to meet our guide Naiman inside Tarangire. When we met up with Naiman in Tarangire the first thing we noticed was that he was not in uniform like Wakari and wasn't in uniform for any of the days he was with us. This was a stark contrast to all of the guides we would see on the road at the rest stops, all of whom seemed to be in uniform. The second thing was that Naiman had not been provided with our itinerary and asked us where we were going. On the first night and also on another subsequent night I had to navigate Naiman via Google Maps to reach the accommodation because he had no idea where we were supposed to go. While I didn't mind doing this it was not the service we had paid for, we had assumed we would be able to relax while our guide navigated us to the accommodation points. Another frustrating point was that in the truck we were picked up in, the power point was at the front of the vehicle and easily accessible. However in our eventual truck it was right at the back and much harder to access. If we sat at the back while the phone charged we couldn't hear what useful information our guide was telling us about the animals. Our biggest issue with the truck however was the size of the windows which were much smaller than pretty much every single truck we observed at the rest stops. I've attached photos to demonstrate the struggle for someone to constantly be leaning forward to sight animals which was quite uncomfortable. My wife who is smaller than me had the very same issue and she is only 5 ft 4.
The food: The food at 2 of our lodges was fantastic, however very poor at the other 2 lodges. The packed lunches were dreadful.
The Amazing:
Naiman - Our guide Naiman was extremely skilled on the challenging roads and we're very grateful that we never got a flat tyre. He was also extremely knowledgeable about the animals and we really enjoyed his company. We saw the vast majority of animals that we wanted to see and have to give Naiman lots of credit for that.
Naiman is a nice person with a friendly manner and is clearly an extremely hard worker. He works very long hours and on one occasion at the end of a long day after dropping us off he had to go and get the truck fixed which would have made his day even longer.
There was another occasion when there was an issue with the breaks on the truck and we went to a mechanic and Naiman was also getting his hands dirty helping to fix the car. He has a very positive can do attitude that is a huge benefit to Safari360.
This was also evident when on our final day Air Tanzania moved our flight from Arusha to Kilimanjaro airport at very short notice. Even though this added 3 hours travel time to Naiman's day that was unplanned, he still took us to JRO airport which really was such a lifesaver for us! I also really want to thank Safari360 for accommodating this.
On the whole if you book with Safari360 these guys will do a solid job and you will have a great time. However I do believe that there will be better options out there. In some respects the service was lacklustre, in other respects they really went above and beyond for us, so this was a challenging review to write.