Africa: Reviews from our travellers

"The trip as a whole was fantastic! I am especially grateful to Richard Trillo, who worked with me through the long process of selecting regions in Kenya to visit, and the sites and the activities. He was very knowledgable and we had a fruitful email "conversation" as we sorted through the details and my wife and I made our choices.

The different parts of the trip - airport pickup with Southern Cross Safaris, the flights, the safari camps and the transfers - all worked together seamlessly.

It was an unforgettable trip, and I feel fortunate to have worked with Richard in crafting it, and am grateful to Expert Africa for having pulled it all together! I will recommend them to friends and family for future travels.

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This is not a complaint as much as something to consider. The trip was a large expenditure - akin to buying a small car, for our family! If it made sense to gather information or provide recommendations on travel insurance, that may be worth considering adding to the Expert Africa portfolio. We ended up using SquareMouth, which worked well for us (caveat: we made no claims)." Read full review: 10 nights in Africa; 9 on a Kenya safari

"We had planned it as the holiday of a lifetime and it proved to be exactly this, just perfect.

The arrangements were flawless from start to finish

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No, and I will certainly recommend you to anyone travelling to Africa, we will certainly come back again" Read full review: 19 nights in Africa; 10 on a Tanzania safari

"We loved our trip, it was fantastic.

Namibia is a varied and unspoilt country and being there was a privilege. Etosha totally lived up to it's billing as one of the best wildlife locations in Africa, we saw rhino repeatedly as well as lion, leopard and black faced impala.

The desert landscapes are remarkable and walking barefoot across the salt at Dead Vlei was a unique experience, as was climbing Dune 45. The wildlife (birds and mammals), the welcoming people, stunning landscape and starry southern skies will all live in our memories, we love still finding desert sand in our trainers." Read full review: 16 nights in Africa; 14 on a Namibia trip

"Overall the trip exceeded my expectations - the activities, the animals, the people, the atmosphere - all of it was phenomenal. I would absolutely go back. We really debated which country to go to and I'm SO glad we selected Zimbabwe.

I could have lived without the trip to Capetown on the front end. It was nice, but not much different than any other cosmopolitan European city. So in hindsight I would have preferred to channel that time into safaris at the camps. But overall an amazing vacation with a lot of unexpected education." Read full review: 10 nights in Africa; 7 on a Zimbabwe safari

"We had an amazing time, and have wonderful memories to keep, We loved every place we visited and found Tanzania to be a beautiful country with friendly people who want to make your holiday special.

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I just wanted to say that Eleanor was fantastic on helping us with this trip. From the first phone call she understood exactly what i was looking for and came up with suggestions that were just right for us. ( I had contacted one other Safari company previous who did not get where i was coming from at all! )
Also I did not feel pressurized from yourself's, so thank you for that.

It was also nice to be able to visit Eleanor and put some of our worries to rest!" Read full review: 12 nights in Africa; 9 on a Tanzania safari

"We had wonderful time." Read full review: 13 nights in Africa; 13 on a Namibia trip

"We travelled to Namibia mid July 2015 staying in the country for 15 nights. We are a family of four with 16 and 14 year old boys.

It was me that did the planning with lots of time on the Expert Africa web site and discussions with the excellent Sabina and Martha. Reading people's feedback, my expectations for the holiday were very high and they were met and exceeded. All the logistics went without a hitch, travelling around was very easy, the lodges were great, and of course the wildlife, scenery and people fantastic.

We planned our trip to visit Namibia with excellent guidance from Sabina and Martha at Expert Africa. I am sure that their knowledge and experience helped to make it a great holiday for us. You can read our experiences on individual lodges and activities on the relevant pages so the following is more general stuff.

The flights to Namibia do get booked up well in advance for mid July as it is a busy time and of course more expensive the later you get so it is best to plan and book your trip at least 4 months in advance. Accommodation also gets booked up limiting choices.

We originally planned to go clockwise - Naukluft Mountains, Sossusvlei, Swakopmund, Damaland, Etosha, Central Highlands. However due to the accommodation availability we ended up going the other way. In hindsight was this a problem? No we didn't think so. Visiting Okonjima first was fantastic and seeing Cheetah and Leopards close up (10 - 20m) was amazing. Ok they are radio collared so much easier to find (not guaranteed) but so what! We did see 'wild' cheetah in Etosha, but from what I gather this is by no means guaranteed and leopards even less likely. Okonjima was the best place we visited in terms of the accommodation and trips, and we would have preferred to stay there 2 nights.

Being the end of July it was the dry season and winter in Namibia. We are not very keen on high temperatures and the daytime temps were low to high 20's during our visit which along with low humidity was perfect. Of course night time temperatures were pretty cold - 10 deg C? Namibia doesn't do much heating apart from open fires in the communal areas and blankets / hot water bottles in the lodges. However we took the advice provided and packed and wore layers to keep us warm in the evenings and mornings. This was one of the reasons why we opted for lodges rather than a camping trip to Namibia. Obviously it was a more expensive trip though.

We booked our flights independently saving about £600 but this did impact on our holiday in that we were planning on visiting the excellent Okonjima first. However the flight I booked didn't arrive until 1pm which didn't allow enough time to get through immigration, collect the hire car and the 3.5 hrs drive from the airport, therefore we had to stay one night at River Crossing and then only one night at Okonjima and it would have been better to have arrived earlier and had two nights at Okonjima.

We planned to have two nights at most of the places we went to which makes for a more relaxing trip and time to relax as well as the activities, especially as quite a few of the trips involve early morning starts. Our trip included 2,500km of driving so having relaxing days makes this easier.

We found all the Namibians we met very warm, friendly and welcoming. The reception and service at the places we stayed at was great and In a number of lodges, we were greeted with a song as well as drink and hot towel. They were happy to chat, especially the managers and all appeared to be happy. We very much enjoyed the singing that the staff did after dinner at a number of the lodges.

Food - Our boys are not the most adventurous and at most of the places we stayed at there was either a set menu with no choices or a choice of main menu only. However, they ate just about all that was put in front of them! Game steak was a regular feature, and it was excellent! Breakfast usually included a cooked option (usually eggs & bacon) which set the day off well, especially on an early start. Most places had cold drinks, tea, coffee and hot chocolate availabile throughout the day and cake at tea time so we didn't go hungry! House wine was usually good and drinks usually sensibly prices (relative to UK prices).

Obviously it is a sparsely populated country (about 2 million people) in a country 3+ times the size of the UK so there aren't lots of shops you can just stop at and pick up a snack. So you need to plan ahead a bit, order a packed lunch if necessary but there are good shops in the towns.

In Swakopmund we wanted to do the kayaking with seals as well as sand boarding and you can do both on one day - kayaking in the morning and sand boarding in the afternoon. However it typically gets windy in the afternoon and the sand boarding would not be as much fun. So we opted to spend 3 nights in Swakopmund (at the excellent Organic Square apartments) and do kayaking on the 1st morning and sand boarding on the 2nd day which worked out very well, and the weather for both was excellent. Given we had a long drive from Damaraland and to Sesriem either side of Swakopmund, it made sense as well.

My wife didn't fancy sand boarding so went on Tommy's Tour to see the wildlife etc. Although it got excellent reviews her experience was not that good. Although they found and saw interesting animals, the group was too large (30) and his rather old vehicle had problems and did breakdown once so he was stressed about that. The biggest problem was that there wasn't time to ask questions and quite a bit was in German rather than English.

WiFi - Our boys are not surprisingly used to having a decent broadband connection. As just about all the places we stayed at were remote, some very, the connection speed was poor, and in one place there was no WiFi (only via satellite on a PC which was available for public use). Clearly they were frustrated but we thought it wasn't a bad thing and to be honest there'd was lots to do and see!! We did set one of the boys the challenge of making a video of the trip. Given he had plenty of time in the car, this worked well and he did an excellent job making a 26min video set to music and we will enjoy this for years to come!

Driving - The roads are great whether tarmac or gravel and navigation easy. Of the 2,500km a bit over half was on gravel. We had a 2WD Honda CRV which was fine and our 4 suitcases fitted in the boot under the pull over cover (just!). Obviously you can't go as fast on gravel, and some were more rutted than others but generally they were fine and there was little traffic on the road. You can't drive after dark as there is a high risk of hitting animals, and we did see a lot of warthogs and some other large herbivores close to the road so you do need to keep your wits about you! We didn't get any punctures and the Bidvest (Budget) car pick up and drop off at the airport was easy. Many of the journeys were 3+ hours long and two were 5+. To help the time pass, we download some audio books which we played through the cars audio system via an aux lead and this helped the time pass, as well as some spectacular scenery at times. Fuel was cheap but you do need to pay by cash.

Winter means the dry season, and therefore not much vegetation and animals having to visit water holes. All good news for seeing animals, and we had a great time just sitting by water holes watching the animals come and go. At one in Etosha, when we arrived there were 3 lions and then 5 others arrived over the period of an hour, all greeting the others as they met.

Etosha - we stayed at Okaukuejo Camp. On the way we stopped off at Halali which didn't seem as nice, and the flood lit water hole at Okaukuejo really was fantastic, or maybe we were lucky with the animals and their coming and going. The food and accommodation was fine. We were advised to drive ourselves around which worked well, although the advantage of going with a guide is they talk to each other on the radio so you get a better chance of seeing animals, and of course you can learn from them more about the wildlife, park etc. We did a trip into Etosha from Mushara with a guide and then did the rest ourselves which we think worked well.

Trips - We contemplated going on an organised trip with a guide, the advantages being not having to worry about any organisation when out there and having the opportunity to learn from the guide, and for us and the boys to interact with the others in the group - could be good, or not so??!! However the downside was having to go on specific dates (which wasn't easy) and limited to the

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I think you did an excellent job, but it would have been nice to have had more detail on how the price was made up rather than just a single figure." Read full review: 15 nights in Africa; 12 on a Namibia trip

"The safaris were incredible and the camp was really beautiful. We felt really safe the whole time" Read full review: 3 nights in Africa; 1 on a Zambia safari

"Organising the holiday was fairly straightforward with Expert Africa and we felt well looked after: Claire was very knowledgeable and gave us good advice.

Suggestions to help us improve our trips or our service:

not really!" Read full review: 14 nights in Africa; 9 on a Zambia safari

"a very memorable trip, we had a fantastic time and would definitely recommend you to our friends and use you again in the future" Read full review: 13 nights in Africa; 12 on a Tanzania safari