Africa: Reviews from our travellers

"We had booked this trip in November 2019, so the anticipation was quite something! Claire Scott kept in touch with us throughout the booking and reassured us on the rollovers and was great at keeping our dates and also advising on flights and booking them.

We've been travelling with Expert Africa since about 1997 and so they know our taste and the importance of great guiding. The two Shenton Camps came highly recommended and did not disappoint.

It was lovely to get a text from Expert Africa's founder, Chris McIntyre, as we were in the departure lounge, wishing us a great trip and telling us about his recent visit to Kaingo and Mwamba.

As you can tell from our review, we are two very happy customers!

Suggestions to help us improve our trips or our service:

Thank you and keep up this excellent service." Read full review: 11 nights in Africa; 9 on a Zambia safari

"A great trip!!!!!!!! We waited two year for it, having cancelled it in 2020 and 2021. We are very happy with everything, including my wife who joined me again in a safari since 1989!

Namibia is a special country with so much to explore other than wildlife; if the latter is the focus other african countries may be better suited to my view.

And thus, belonging to this group, after my last two trips to Rwanda and Namibia, I am ready to go back to east Africa :)" Read full review: 12 nights in Africa; 8 on a Namibia trip

"We were extremely happy with our trip as a whole.

Temperatures in the middle of the day and early afternoon (mid 30's and possibly high 30's on some days) were hotter than we had expected. This is not intended as a criticism of Expert Africa but did mean that our siestas in both Lebala and Kwara were uncomfortable, unbearably so at Kwara.

A small point which other guests might find helpful is that we had purchased Kaza visas online in advance via the Zimvisa website but the immigration officer at the Zimbabwe border gave us a load of hassle, claiming that the various papers we had printed off from the Zimvisa website were insufficient proof that our payments had been accepted and that we had been granted visas. He also refused to accept the emails we showed him on our phones confirming that our payments had been accepted and forced us to find somewhere to get the emails printed off, which we eventually did in some very small unrelated office (where we felt obliged to tip the guys who kindly helped us).

This was incredibly stressful and time consuming and I hate to think what switching on roaming at the border to find the relevant emails will have cost us!

Our driver suggested that the immigration officer may have "wanted something in the hand". I am going to complain to the Zimbabwe visa service about this but doubt whether that will achieve anything.

I think getting the visa at border is currently the best approach.

Suggestions to help us improve our trips or our service:

No, your service is excellent" Read full review: 11 nights in Africa; 8 on a Botswana safari

"Our first trip to Zimbabwe and we will return to Zimbabwe at some future point." Read full review: 14 nights in Africa; 13 on a Zimbabwe safari

"We had high hopes/expectations for our trip, and they were thoroughly exceeded! We loved every minute of it, and both camps, although different, were spectacular in their own ways. We hope this is not our last trip to Africa!" Read full review: 12 nights in Africa; 10 on a Tanzania safari

"We have had a wonderful few weeks, discovering new places and enjoying the return to old favourites. Namibia has changed in some ways since we first visited in 2000, but the rugged beauty and the solitude remains.

I’ll get the major disappointment out first, not that you can do anything about it - Simba don’t make tomato sauce flavour crisps any more! Disaster!

In general, we learnt a lot about how we personally need to plan travel in the future, both having gained various back/hip/knee problems since we last travelled any distance and, at times, feeling more than a mere three years older.

I don’t think we will consider ‘one night stands’ again, especially if it means an hour or more down a gravel road basically just to eat and sleep. Namtib and Ai Aibas are both beautiful places and we had no time to do them justice. We’re not early risers and we are slow drivers, who like to stop and look, which all combined to have us on the road 9.30-4.30 for several days, which was exhausting.

We did look at the hotels in several of the towns and wonder whether we won't be better off to stay somewhere like that as a transit stop.

We also need to carefully look at the lodges, to consider whether we can actually cope there. If there is a steep walk to the reception or lots of steps, it's difficult. Also, there's no point in going somewhere and finding that the walks involve hiking up a mountain!

Being experienced travellers to Namibia, we think we won't try one of your set itineraries again. We would prefer to custom-build, knowing that we will have sound advice from you. We have booked all our previous visits through you (or Sunvil, originally) and we wouldn't consider going anywhere else.

There are certain areas which we won't choose to visit again, because of the poor quality of the gravel roads. For instance, the roads around the entrance to Sossussvlei were appalling. The drive to Swakop, once past Solitaire, had nowhere to stop and seems endless. The one picnic area was infested with wasps - what a disappointment! Also, much as we love Etosha, we spent very little time driving to other waterholes because the roads are awful.


We found most other visitors were German, with far fewer from Britain than on our previous trips. Not a problem; just a comment.

We'd like to mention Wilderness Safaris, whose staff were excellent whilst we used their airport lounge and then in guiding us through the airport. Whilst we were there, we had an interesting conversation with a gentleman whose was a senior commercial officer for the airports authority. He was interested in our descriptions of how a trip to Namibia is viewed my many of our friends in the UK; namely, if they actually know where Namibia is, as bonkers and dangerous, particularly as we drive ourselves. He was considering what commercial measures could be taken to dispel any fears and misunderstandings amongst UK people.
However, we're quite happy if tourist numbers don't increase!

Altogether, an outstandingly brilliant time, no less than we expected!

Thank you." Read full review: 24 nights in Africa; 15 on a Namibia trip

"The planning, help and support we got from Tracy and Expert Africa were indispensable and perfect.

I could go on and on to detail all the little and big things that you all did to help. All the time Tracy was willing to spend on the phone and by email, the ability to kindly and thoroughly field and sort any query, your excellent materials, and the deep, broad personal knowledge of the country you bring to the process, are inestimably useful.

I can save your time and mine by simply saying you did superbly." Read full review: 18 nights in Africa; 13 on a Botswana safari

"This was my seventh visit to the RPS camps in the South Luangwa, but the first time on my own. I had a marvellous welcome from everyone at Tena Tena, Nsefu and Nkwali, especially from the guides and staff who I had met on previous visits.

With a total of thirteen nights there, I had many excellent wildlife sightings (returning with over 2000 images to process!) as a result of superb guiding. And the friendliness of all the camp staff made my time there so wonderful. Everything went according to plan.

I am grateful to Megan for constantly updating my itinerary as a result of the postponements of my trip originally scheduled for 2020, then postponed to 2021.

But finally I was back there! Africa is only a night flight away.........." Read full review: 17 nights in Africa; 13 on a Zambia safari

"We initially booked this trip with Expert Africa in late February/early March, 2020. Then Covid hit and the world went into lockdown. Maruska was our contact person from the start, making the reservations and setting up the itinerary for us.

We went through many ups and downs over the course of these two years, never sure if indeed the trip would materialize. Initially we postponed the September, 2020 trip to 2021, but it still did not seem wise to go then, so we postponed it to August/September, 2022. If we could have gotten most of our deposit returned, we would have cancelled the entire trip, with all of the continued worries and anxiety that Covid was inflicting on the world.

As Expert Africa has a firm policy of not returning deposits, we postponed the trip again to 2022. We are so glad we did! It all turned out fabulous, and thankfully, we remained healthy.

Throughout this long postponement, with the changes involved, Maruska was always exceedingly polite, understanding, and respectful of our worries and concerns. She did an extraordinary job arranging our trip, which involved four different countries, multiple flights, and many different camps.

The organization was outstanding and everything was seamless.

Truly incredible attention to detail. Thank you.

Suggestions to help us improve our trips or our service:

Can’t think of any." Read full review: 29 nights in Africa; 9 on a Namibia trip

"The trip was fantastic- Expert Africa made it effortless for us! Jessica Plumb (contact at Expert Africa) was very knowledgeable and tailored the trip to our interests/budget. She was very responsive, answering all our questions and providing us with a detailed itinerary.

The safari lodges and accommodation were true to the description given by Expert Africa, and were consistently of high quality.

It was great to be able to enjoy the trip without having to think about internal flights and airport transfers, all of which was taken care of by Expert Africa.

Overall we had an incredible experience on our honeymoon and wouldn't hesitate to recommend Expert Africa!" Read full review: 15 nights in Africa; 8 on a Tanzania safari