JP
20-35 years of age | Experience level: first safari
Great experience excluding tour guide, Mr.Noely
Yes, I and my wife could see a lot of animals including all Big5 in this tour, it was great for us.
We got satisfied with it.
But our tour guide, Mr.Noely, his attitude to us was terrible, he ruined our experience.
We're really regret choosing this tour ant giving Mr.Noely tips.
The biggest reason why we're thinking so, is that he denied our religion.
In a convesation, we taught him that many people in our country believe in Buddhism.
He said to us,
" I HATE BUDDHA."
.....What ?? Why can he deny the religion others believe in ??
If you dislike other religion, you must not tell others that.
(We didn't say anything about his comment because we already understood his terrible humanity at that time, and of course we were afraid that he could abandon his responsibility to let us see animals tomorrow.)
The second reason is, he perfectly blamed his traffic violation on us.
He committed a traffic violation because we didn't fasten seatbelt on back seat of a car, and he had to pay the fine of it.
Then his attitude to us got terrible, drove dangerously with many tsk, and told us anything in a car.
Yes, it's true that we didin't fasten seatbelt, but that was because it's NOT illegal in our country, besides he NEVER told us "fasten your seatbelt."
Finaly, we decided that we gave him money ..... to save our lives and the rest of our tour.
There're so many other reasons why Mr.Noely 's humanity was terrible, but the margin is too narrow to contain it.
According to him, Mr.Noely have a 3 years-old daughter.
You must be an adult, because your child always see how parents behave, listen to what parents say.
HU
20-35 years of age | Experience level: first safari
Most horrible organization and client servize management that we have ever experienced
DOUBLE ZERO review if it would be possible!!!
We booked a 3 day safari with this organization to Mikumi. The offer was this:
- 6 hours travel from Dar Es Salaam to Mikumi with lunch then Masai village tour
- full day PRIVATE safari
- full day Udzungwa mountain hiking tour
- 4th day go back to Dar Es Salaam
Drinks, breakfast, lunch, dinners included everything for 1000$ for 2 people (2022 price)
Reality:
- 6 hours trip became 9 hours with really short 20 mins break because we did not want to waste time. Rush to the masai village tour. We signed to the organizer the same night that there are huge differences between 6 hours and 9 hours in a car and on our last day we need to catch a ferry which would not work with this long trip. Asked to change for flight or find some solution...
- next morning it turned out that the Private tour is not private however we booked private tour. Midday I wrote next email about it that basically nothing is the same as in the offer and we would like to find a solution, ask some compensation, or do sg.(dont even talk about the hotel where we were... dirty hot water, airconditioner so noisy that we cant use, etc.) After few hours they wrote back a totally attacking email that everything payed in advance and they will not change the travel for flight because its few thousand dollars. (we asked other guides and they said a 1 way flight to Zanzibar is 120$/person so they didnt even try to ask about fligh possibilities). so generally instead of trying to find solution for our problem they just made nothing. I even asked them to cancel the hiking program and take us back to Dar Es Salaam earlier, give back some money and just forget each other. No answer at all...
- so 3rd day what to do, we went to the full day hiking program. well it turned out that it is only a few hours program, we left the hotel at 8:30 and arrived back to the village at midday (45 mins trip by car). At least the guide adviced a snake farm program that obviously we needed to pay for extra, but at least we could do something. Still we arrived back to the hotel at 1pm... no lunch, no possibility to go out to the village, no activity possibilities in the hotel. basically we could just sit in the bar and drink...
After all of this I have asked some compensation because basically nothing happened on the way that we booked. No private tour, no full day hiking, 9 hours trip instead of 6 hours and really-really-really horrible client service management. So we had soooo much nervousness during those few days... Obiously they just wrote back an attacking email again and thats it. In the last night my wife was even crying because of the organization...
Anyway the qulity of the programs were okey, the guides made really good job, but this is totally not depending on the organizer...
So in sum, DO NOT BOOK with these guys if you are expecting correct client service and programs that you booked and you expect. DONT pay 100% in advance. That was our mistake too, because otherway they would be much helpfull for sure if we pay for example just 70% in advance and rest in the end of safari. For them only the money is important. After they got it, they give a shit about you, does not matter if you are complaining about something.
I hate to write negative feedback, I even offered them that i will not write anything in case of compensation but it seems the reputation is not so important for them in the 21st century... So I really hope that others will not make the same mistake as us of booking safari tour with this organization.
ES
20-35 years of age | Experience level: first safari
Stress, lies and nature
I booked (and paid) a Safari in 2019, which would happen in 2020, for 5 days including: chimps in Kibale, gorillas, climbing lions safari, and birding in Mabamba Swamp.
Obviously, COVID came and we couldn't make the trip in 2020. Richard (the owner), said that it was OK and that we could postpone everything to 2021, but he wasn't able to return the money. 2021 arrived, and we were not yet vaccinated, so at first, we decided to go but then we postponed again. Richard said that it was okay, with no penalties for postponing to 2022.
2022 arrives and around April I start moving everything for July of that year. We fix the dates, I buy the planes and everything seems to be okey. A couple of weeks later, the first unpleasant surprise, Richard tells me that the gorilla permits have expired, and we need to pay again. Even though he was explicit on the opposite a year before. We were angry, but what could we do, we paid again. Starting from that date, I asked like 6 times during the coming months for an official itinerary of the Safari, with the specific dates and what was included. Richard didn't send anything. A week before going to Uganda, he sends me the itinerary, and it was wrong!! The gorillas were booked for the day I was supposed to leave the country. Imagine my stress, ONE WEEK EARLIER with no gorillas, because Richard told me even in April that we should book the gorillas right away because it gets sold out very very quickly.
He said a couple of days later that everything was ok with the gorillas, but the chimps were not going to be in Kibale, but in Kalinzu. I paid 150$ for Kibale and the fee for Kalinzu was 45$. I didn't receive back any money.
We arrive in the country. The planning (roughly) was:
1-. Arriving + Transfer to Chimps zone
2-. Chimps + boat trip
3-. Safari + transfer to gorillas
4-. Gorillas
5-. Birding + departure flight
First day, everything OK.
Second day, chimps. We were alone in Kalinzu, I suppose because it's way worse than Kibale. Terrible surprise, Richard ask me on Whatsapp to borrow him 500$!!! Something about his mother. WTF I thought. Very angry, I answer him that no, I would not give him any money and he ask again for 100$! At that point, I was equally upset and surprised.
Third day. We arrive at Ishasha, and the guide tells us that the national park is closed because of an injured animal. I tell him that then what about the money that I paid for the entrance and how is it possible that an entire park closes without prior notification causing inconveniences to all the visitors. After insisting a couple of times, he said that we could try on the other entrance. We go to the other entrance, and after a couple of minutes of speaking with the people in the park, the guide comes out of the reception tent of the park with a soldier, and the soldier tells us that it was some elephant in the middle of the road that the veterinaries were healing. Big lie, and the soldier was for increasing credibility, I suppose. We arrive at the end of the day at Bwindi. The accommodation was super amazing, and because of that I was a little bit disappointed because we were supposed to start our day at 8 AM, but the guide eventually changed it to 9, and that hour in the balcony of the accommodation would have been amazing.
When we were having dinner, another terrible moment. Richard WhatsApp me, telling me that we were not going to make it to the Birding because watching the gorillas + transfer to Entebbe is too much for one day. Obviously, I was mad again. I asked about the money, and he refused to give anything back. The only option we had is to drive a long long time during the night for arriving on time. This was a bad option because the driving in Uganda is crazy, and even worse at 2 AM with a guide that has driven for 10 hours already.
Forth day. The guides make sure that we were with the group that would arrive quicker to the gorillas. Luckily, we saw the gorillas early and we started heading to Entebbe. We arrived at our very late in the night and we woke up at 04:30 to make it to the birding.
Fifth day. Woken up at 04:30, went to the birding and then to the airport. End of the trip.
The guides made everything that was on their hands to make our trip comfortable, they drove uncountless hours and were very nice to us, but the owner is a very unprofessional person that made our trip very unpleasant for moments, so I can't recommend him.
50-65 years of age | Experience level: over 5 safaris
Failed to deliver your. Currently taking legal action against them.
Be extremely careful. Use an Abta approved agent. They failed to book internal flights from Nairobi to Arusha.
MX
20-35 years of age | Experience level: 2-5 safaris
Terrible and an scam
Please if you can hire another company, do it…. They made a terrible itinerary for us and we lost 2 days because of them
Do Not recomend
Disorganised, disappointing, and expensive
Whilst this is a review of a Natural World Safari holiday in Sri Lanka that we went on and not Africa, we have posted it here to inform others considering holidaying with this company.
We do not recommend booking a holiday with this company. Their online literature gives the impression of a professional organisation offering a wonderful opportunity to swim with blue whales but once out in Sri Lanka the organisation was nothing short of shambolic.
We paid £14k (excluding flights, food, and beverage) to go on a Sri Lankan blue whale safari trip that was without doubt the most disorganised, disappointing, and most expensive holiday we have ever experienced. We had accepted that a proportion of the cost went towards conservation and research, but the holiday was so substandard in every way that we feel totally conned by this. Aside from the trip being a strong contender for the world's worst honeymoon, we were misled to believe that the Picture Adventure Expeditions operation that Natural World Safaris commissioned for this holiday, would have permits to swim with blue whales in the Northeast of Sri Lanka. This was what sold us the holiday. The literature sent to us from Natural World Safaris in both selling us the trip and again after we had paid the first instalment for it, boasted that they work with the top blue whale scientist in Sri Lanka: Asha De Vos. By coincidence, we met two acquaintances of Asha's on a later part of our holiday in Sri Lanka whilst in Wilpattu. They were surprised that Asha would be involved with an operator that allowed tourists to swim with whales and contacted her to verify this claim. It turns out Natural World Safaris were falsely using Asha De Vos' name and she publicly denied all association with Natural World Safaris (which we confirmed by contacting her directly ourselves).
When we contacted Natural World Safaris (at the end of the trip) asking for proof of the permits to swim with whales in the Northeast of Sri Lanka, we were informed that although they had been requested by Natural World Safari's "partner", they had not been confirmed because Natural World Safaris had failed to provide our passport details to them despite them having had them for over a year or contacting us to check whether they had changed.
During our holiday, the incompetence and recklessness of the employed boat captain was truly alarming. This “personally taught” (by Natural World Safaris) captain had no idea how to safely drive a power boat and the tour leader from Picture World Safaris did nothing to intervene despite the distress of his three clients. As a qualified yachtsman and RYA powerboat driver myself, I had to intervene several times to curb his ‘joy riding’ style of driving a speed boat in high waves and at beaching it too. Our accommodation at one point in the trip was little more than a hostel and of the quality that even the cockroaches were trying to move out. On top of this, our guide and operator of Picture Adventure Expeditions, Josh, seemed to be concentrating more on running his printing business back in India than ensuring his guests, who had each forked out £7k were kept safe and received reasonable value for the holiday they paid for.
DE
50-65 years of age | Experience level: 2-5 safaris
Unscrupulous
We made a large down payment to the owner but we suspect that he never transferred it to his partner in Tanzania because they did not render us any service. Capture Tanzania Adventure did not provide a refund and we lost our money. As a result, it is our opinion that the owner does not care about the disappointment and the loss of family money.
US
50-65 years of age | Experience level: 2-5 safaris
Lying exploitive uncaring irresponsible
NSW tried to have my original review removed they said that my review would hurt Africa. They tried to victim blamed/Shane me. It’s the kidnapping that would hurt Africa!
So, This is a rebuttal to NSW response to the review I left regarding my kidnapping while on tour paid to them. Unbeknownst to me it was brokered out to wild frontiers I was not traveling with natural world safaris but I did pay them. There was no one to meet me at the airport when I arrived, by myself, in uganda but more importantly is their reply to my review. It is nothing short of blatant lies and trying to cover themselves. To date they have never once reached out to me, their statement is completely untrue. However an attorney for me did reach out to them and all they did was pass it onto their insurance company and wish me well. They weren’t even willing to refund my tour. The loss to My life has been inmeasurable both to me personally and professionally. So it’s highly insulting that they want to come on here and leave their untruths so that they don’t suffer. This company did not suffer with me or offer any help of any kind ever. The amount of therapy I’ve had to go to to help overcome not just the kidnapping but society‘s response to my kidnapping including this company has been lengthy and expensive .
Things go Wrong in life what matters is what do you do when they do go wrong as far as this his company is concerned they did nothing but insult on top of injury ,rub salt in a wound, and add to my complex PTSD. And as for not wanting to go into a social media thing now that’s just plain funny. But I do & will . I want to let society know exactly who you’re dealing with when you go into dangerous places were dangerous things can happen and what they did and how they handled it and that’s just the truth.
all you have to do is look at their Instagram page they’ve added Uganda back on the tours (they took it off after my kidnapping ) and David is there recently doing things that I missed out on because, well, I was kidnapped!
Shady & shameful I recommend going elsewhere.
20-35 years of age | Experience level: 2-5 safaris
DO NOT TRUST. SCAMMER. TRAVEL AGENT FROM HELL
•Cancelled tour 1 day before flight from London and we PAID OVER $1000 USD to reschedule flights and accommodation, because he did not disclose that he failed to get the permit
•Booked SUBPAR accommodation and transport, from what was agreed.
•Still OWES US MONEY (waiting 6 months) for the disorganisation and troubles.
•Lack of communication and updates
•CHANGED OUR INTERNAL FLIGHTS without telling us resulting in stopovers and delays.
I have email proof of all of this for anyone who still wants to book with them.
OVERALL A REALLY NEGATIVE AND HORRIBLE EXPERIENCE OF OUR FIRST IN UGANDA.
FR
50-65 years of age | Experience level: first safari
No attention, bad material, bad hotel
We paid 1000 euros more than the price!!! No refund because Wecam safari and especially Mercy are not honest. They keep your money and give you bad hotels. Don’t take the bad company. Our vehicle was not able to do the trip, the driver was not French , as we paid and the hotel are so so fad, immigration people..they are not professionals and not honest.