Travel reviews by Mr & Mrs B from Derby

Safari in South Luangwa

On this trip, I visited Zambia between 14-Sep-2011 and 26-Sep-2011 and I travelled with 1 other person.

We had a wonderful time! The lodges and camps were very much as we expected - or even better. It is true that one can 'travel light' because washing really does come back on the same day. Our sightings of wildlife were beyond our expectations and have left us with some marvellous memories - and hundreds of photos. We saw leopards on no fewer that seven occasions, and lions that were within touching diistance, not to mention all the antelopes, birds and other animals.

Unfortunately there was one event that could have spoilt our holiday had we not been fairly seasoned travellers who do not easliy panic. On arrival at Lusaka we discovered that our names were not on the Proflight list for the flight to Mfuwe, and it was full. The existence of our Expert Africa voucher for the flight proved totally worthless. Fortunatey we were assisted by staff from Tours Africa, who tried to contact Expert Africa for us but it was before office hours in the UK, and Chris McIntyre's phone was on voicemail.

They then contacted Heather at Tafika, and she sorted out an eTicket for the midday flight. All this meant we lost a morning hanging around at Lusaka airport, when we were expecting to be travelling out to the Luangwa valley. When we did arrive at Mfuwe we were met by a driver who had had to make an extra round trip to pick us up when he should have been on his way to one of the Tafika bushcamps. So our arrival at Tafika was all very rushed in the end, and not at all the relaxing start to a holiday that had been planned.

We would point out that Heather also checked our return Proflight flight, and passed on an eTicket (booked by Claire Scott), as there was no booking for that either. She also checked with Shentons that they were expecting us. Considering that this holiday was booked in early February this experience was very disappointing.

I stayed at and have reviewed:

Place	Overall rating
Tafika, Zambia 15-Sep-2011 review: Tafika - our first experience of Zambia	Excellent
Kaingo Camp, Zambia 18-Sep-2011 review: Kaingo = can do	Excellent
Mwamba Bushcamp, Zambia 22-Sep-2011 review: Magical Mwamba	Excellent
Pioneer Camp, Zambia 25-Sep-2011 review: Pioneer Camp	Good