Reviews of safaris to Central Highlands

"We enjoyed Namibia, especially during Covid times when there are so few people.

One lodge, Ai Aiba was disappointing and felt “low end”- our travel consultant should have suggested a different place.

The other issue was with Etendeka and Tok Tokkie: my wife and I found the description quite misleading: there is nothing Luxury about Tok Tokkie, and it should have been presented as a camping trip with no tent. I believe that Etendeka is similar. Expert Africa should have made it very clear that conditions are very basic and that it can get freezing cold, windy and sandy at night and the bed is a very basic foldable one, and this was not conveyed to us clearly. While Mandulea was also not luxurious, it did have some basic comforts like light, real bed, shower and toilettes which worked well for us.

On the positive side, Onguma and Hoodia exceeded our expectations and were superb." Read full review: 19 nights in Africa; 15 on a Namibia trip

"My family had high expectations for this Namibia trip, but it exceeded all of them! All of the lodges were excellent, staff amazing, and the food delicious.

In terms Covid, all staff wore masks and, from what I understand, were vaccinated.

Lastly, Maruska at Expert Africa went above and beyond to help us plan the trip and ensure it went smooth and safe. She helped us defer from 2020 to 2021, including changing the entire route due to lodge availability. She helped us find a Covid testing site prior to our return and informed about the very last minute entry requirement changes, which we would've missed otherwise. We are now looking forward to booking our future trips with Maruska and Expert Africa!

Suggestions to help us improve our trips or our service:

None, everything was excellent." Read full review: 19 nights in Africa; 14 on a Namibia trip

"Amazing trip" Read full review: 16 nights in Africa; 16 on a Namibia trip

"We were able to complete two weeks of a four week trip before having to leave at short notice because of the travel restrictions imposed due to the Coronavirus.

What we saw and did in those two weeks we loved.

Suggestions to help us improve our trips or our service:

Nothing at all. Sabina worked tirelessly to sort out flights for us to get us out of Namibia and back to the UK. The situation was changing every few hours as did the airline timetables and seats were very limited indeed. We absolutely could not have done this ourselves. I should point out that we had booked our flights independently and were not meant to be flying out of Windhoek at all so Expert Africa really did go above and beyond in helping us.

We have used Expert Africa a number of times over the years and always recommeded to friends. This trip absolutely highlighted why !" Read full review: 22 nights in Africa; 13 on a Namibia trip

"Expert Africa were fabulous. An incredible trip was planned at relatively short notice.

We particularly liked the small details such as the travel pack that was sent ahead of the trip.

Thank you Sabina!" Read full review: 13 nights in Africa; 13 on a Namibia trip

"We had an excellent trip to Namibia and it was good to be back there after 10 years. We had a plan of where we wanted to stay, but due to lack of availability, our itinerary was not possible, and it was initially suggested that perhaps the trip should be postponed until 2020.

We were keen to visit in 2019, and Tom Morris worked extremely hard to come up with a workable itinerary. This he managed to do, keeping our trip to the area we had originally planned, encompassing some of the accommodation we had wanted and also introducing some new ones. The itinerary worked very well and gave us a mix of self-drive and guided drives.

Thank you Tom for once again organising another excellent trip for us." Read full review: 24 nights in Africa; 22 on a Namibia trip

"We had an excellent trip. But, like a previous reviewer, we would have enjoyed it more with a better vehicle. EA recommend a Renault Duster as being 4-wheel drive and adequate for the Namibian roads. While 4-wheel drive is occasionally useful, the Duster has standard tyres and in some places more rubber is definitely needed. The roads round Sesriem and in Damaraland are considerably worse than in other parts we visited and we would recommend anyone visiting these areas to pick a Toyota hi-lux. See our comments on Bidvest for more details.

Our second disappointment was the amount of electric light we experienced. Nearly every lodge had path lights which stayed on all night, ruining the view of the sky, and in some cases our sleep. We were used to little light and Tilley lamps on previous visits to Africa and this came as a shock. Tok Tokkie and Mundulea were a relief from this. In some places the lights were behind the tent/room but at Erongo we had to resort to removing lightbulbs from the path outside to allow us to sleep. At Ongava, the waterhole light shone directly into our room. We are very saddened that lodges feel this amount of light is necessary.

EA often states that when on half board “drinks are extra”. Most of the lodges we stayed on half board included 2 large glasses of house wine per person each night. Sundowners were extra.

We stayed at 3 Wilderness Safaris lodges and got to know their dining style. Everywhere else game was often the meat provided, at Wilderness it was regularly basic beef, pork or chicken which was quite uninteresting. They also had an obsession with hot plates, which at 30C seemed unnecessary.

It was very nice to receive a recent copy of the Namibia guidebook in August. This was hardly opened before our trip and still fell apart before we got to Etosha. A large number of pages fell out somewhere which meant that we didn't have the information about Etosha that we wanted. We also had with us a 30 year old bird book with all its pages intact. It's a shame Bradt can't make their books a little more robust.

We were told that using toilets at petrol stations could not be recommended. We carefully took a trowel and a roll of paper with us. This was completely unnecessary as every toilet we visited was spotless." Read full review: 25 nights in Africa; 20 on a Namibia trip

"Thoroughly enjoyed our first trip to Namibia and definitely want to go back.

We deliberately only covered a relatively small area so we didn’t have to drive more than 4.5 hours a day and are glad we did this to ensure we had the time to properly see what we wanted.

Will definitely use you again for our next trip!" Read full review: 12 nights in Africa; 9 on a Namibia trip

"A fantastic experience.

Enjoyed our days driving in Namibia, seeing the very dry terrain which was so different from when we last visited in April 2018. The lodges where we stayed were very good, the wildlife we saw exceptionally varied, and the people we met were a delight.

Cape Town was crazy busy, fun, very different to when we last visited 22 years ago and the whale watching in Hermanus was well worth a day trip. Our favourite activity was visiting Kirstenbosch and seeing the proteas.
The Okavango Delta in Botswana and Shinde in particular was the icing on the cake and probably the best African experience we have ever had, and we’ve had 7 trips to Africa over the years, so that’s praise indeed!

First time we've used Expert Africa and we are well-impressed. Thank you Megan for listening to what we wanted and helping us to make the choices, it was a perfect holiday - no, a perfect ADVENTURE!" Read full review: 17 nights in Africa; 8 on a Namibia trip

"We had the absolute best honeymoon ever!!

Namibia is an incredible and varied country and the itinerary enabled us to experience as much of this beautiful country as possible in two weeks. You can tell that a huge amount of work has gone into planning these trips and itineraries - it was perfectly paced for us, with the right amount of time in each place and wonderful places to stay. The Etosha part of the trip was especially well planned, with a base in the East and then in the South it meant that we could cover a good proportion of the Park, and one of our 'travel days' was also a full day within the Park which was fantastic.

There was plenty of driving but it never felt too much, especially as we shared the driving, which was a big positive.

All of the places we stayed were incredibly welcoming, with excellent food and some really luxurious touches.

As we are usually quite independent travellers, we really welcomed the fact that we were booked mainly on a half board basis, as we were very happy to drive ourselves around Etosha and the attractions in Damaraland and Swakop/Walvis Bay, so this worked perfectly for us. But we were very pleased that the excursion at Hoodia was included as it was fantastic and we wouldn't have fancied driving ourselves on the sand.

All of the communication we have received throughout the process has been first class. The travel guide was an invaluable companion which is now looking very well used!

Thank you for making our honeymoon so memorable." Read full review: 15 nights in Africa; 13 on a Namibia trip