Reviews of trips to Stone Town
351 holiday reviews from our travellers of holidays which include Stone Town.
"a wonderful holiday"
Suggestions to help us improve our trips or our service:
No. We hope to travel with you again in the near future." Read full review: 16 nights in Africa; 9 on a Zanzibar holiday
"A wonderful safari and beach experience"
A great safari experience with a bit of Zanzibar adventure thrown in at the end.
Expert Africa have come up trumps again." Read full review: 23 nights in Africa; 13 on a Kenya safari
"Xmas beach Holiday"
Suggestions to help us improve our trips or our service:
None I can think of" Read full review: 21 nights in Africa; 6 on a Tanzania safari
"Tanzania is awesome"
"Amazing trip to Selous, Ruaha and Zanzibar"
We appreciated the gentle encouragement to go to 2 separate safari parks as we had been put off visiting Ruaha by the extra cost, but it was worth every penny. The contrast in environment and scenery between Selous and Ruaha was particularly marked during our visit as the rains had come early in Selous but yet to arrive in Ruaha. We hadn't realised quite how striking the differences between the 2 parks and wildlife were. We appreciated that Olivia didn't pressurise us to book a more expensive holiday but we would recommend highlighting these differences explicitly to future customers.
The variety of walking, boat and driven safari was brilliant, with expert guides and drivers able to find/spot wildlife and share insights about every species. Sharing these experiences each night at the communal dining areas was lovely too.
The guidebook sent to us before the trip was a really useful extra and we used it to book a recommended eco-tour to Jambiani village as an extra. The leather travel wallet has a lovely construction but could do with being a tiny bit larger (just an extra centimetre?) to accommodate the A4 documents sent out before the holiday.
The camps, hotels and transfers all worked seamlessly - there were no niggles beyond a minor adventure with an aircraft stuck in the mud at an airstrip after overnight rain. We felt very well looked after at each destination and extend our thanks to every member of the teams for making our holiday so memorable." Read full review: 15 nights in Africa; 7 on a Tanzania safari
"Oct/Nov 2019 trip"
The biggest issue was that Olivia had not made clear to me the consequences of the rainy season. I thought it just meant that it would rain a bit during the day and we would get wet, something I don't care about. What it really meant is that the bush would be so green and thick that animals would be extremely hard to see, that water would be so readily available everywhere that animals would be widely dispersed across hundreds of thousands of acres, and therefore hard to find, that the bugs would be fierce. and that the normally rough, bumpy roads would be so deeply rutted and washed out hat driving was bone crushing. And, as I noted in my comments about Sarara, some activities such as the Singing Wells, were not possible. No one can control the weather but if I had known what the rainy season was really like I don't think I would have taken the chance of traveling in the shoulder season. Since we were the only guests at a number of places, i felt everybody else had gotten the memo except us!
Also, some of the logistics could have been worked out better. Though the three Samburu camps look equidistant on a map, in fact it made no sense to go to Saruni Rhino last instead of Sarani Samburu, which is quite close to the airstrip.By going there last, it added another 2 and a half hour jeep trip on washed out roads to get back to the airstrip we had just come from two days earlier.
Finally, we were never told that the trip from Saruni Rhino to Plantation Lodge would be over 10 hours. We were shocked to discover on arrival at Kilamijaro that our jeep ride was over 4 hours. I can't believe there was not a scheduled or even charter flight from Kili to Manyara. In any event, no one told us about the length of the trip and we had no food from 8 AM till 6:30 PM expect for the driver's small pack of Pringles. I expected better attention to logistics.
With the exception of Stone Town, all the places we stayed were great. I just wish we had done the trip a different year when we could have done it at the right time." Read full review: 20 nights in Africa; 7 on a Kenya safari
"Fantastic Trip"
All of our camps, guides, hotels and transport were wonderful. Thank you Jessica and Expert Africa!" Read full review: 17 nights in Africa; 9 on a Tanzania safari
"A very enjoyable trip to Tanzania"
"The safari/ beach holiday"
One small comment was the times on our itinerary were different to Fisherman’s Tours. As such I thought they were late so rang the number on the itinerary for them to check someone was coming. They did arrive 5-10 minutes later, which was just before 6.30am, the time they had down. We were expecting them at 6am.
They did give us their itinerary with the times, down, but I hadn’t read it prior to the pick up.
The driver informed me I had phoned the general manager of Fisherman’s Tours, not the local office! Perhaps it would be worth checking the numbers on your itinerary which is where I got the number from.
Similarly the pick up from Qambani, was at 5am, not 5.30am as on our itinerary.
Suggestions to help us improve our trips or our service:
We thoroughly enjoyed our trip, thank you for the organisation and recommendations. The service was excellent, and everything went fine.
Our only struggle, was with tipping, who and how much ! and not having local currency when we arrived. The porters at Zanzibar are quick to strike on the poor inexperienced traveller!!
We took advice from the Siwandu manager, (who was overall excellent) re tipping the staff, but I probably hadn’t read your comments carefully enough. I think we ended up tipping $4-500 dollars over the trip, which I hadn’t really been expecting, so I guess it would help to give a ball park figure to the client initially.
Thank you Chris for spending so long on the phone with me and Lyndsey for putting it all together." Read full review: 16 nights in Africa; 8 on a Tanzania safari
"Beautiful Intro to Kenya & Tanzania"
Our limited constructive feedback as follows: All camps provided toiletries and washing powder, so no need to bring. Camps advertising laundry services still did not wash underwear (male or female), nor handkerchiefs. Drive to Il Ngwesi from Wilson airport was interesting, but ended up as quite an odyssey as driver did not know the way through Lewa Conservancy to the camp. As no signs available, this ended up as an additional 2 hours of desperately trying to find the camp before dark. All good in the end, but maybe check drivers know their destination before setting off." Read full review: 21 nights in Africa; 13 on a Kenya safari
Where to stay in Stone Town
Our suggestions for places to stay in Stone Town