Africa: Reviews from our travellers

"A wonderful trip. We have excellent advice and service from Sabina at Expert Africa - thoroughly recommended. Namibia is a perfect place for an active holiday - dramatic landscapes, friendly people and a huge range of wildlife.

Thank you." Read full review: 19 nights in Africa; 18 on a Namibia trip

"The trip was wonderful, everything worked like clockwork and all the arrangements were perfect.

Namibia was a beautiful country and the weather was perfect, much warmer than we expected, though cold at night, and no clouds at all for the entire trip, fog at Swakopmund on one day. The driving on tarmac was easy and on gravel we felt that 4x4 made the driving much more pleasant, others suffered with ordinary hire cars.

We ventured into towns, shops and garages and felt quite comfortable, only at Windhoek was there more of an edge with quite a lot of youths hanging about in the evening. The standard of accommodation and food was higher than we had expected, the scenery outstanding and the game in Etosha more widespread than we had expected." Read full review: 19 nights in Africa; 16 on a Namibia trip

"We really enjoyed our holiday and the positives completely outweigh the negatives and I have the photos to prove it.

We would go back to Botswana tomorrow - The Lagoon lodge was a fantastic experience.

Despite my reservations about the car it did not let us down after the puncture episode and was quiet and comfortable to ride in

To view my photos here http://picasaweb.google.com/perces/Namibia2008" Read full review: 21 nights in Africa; 16 on a Namibia trip

"Expert Africa were the Experts for us. We had a vague idea it would be good to go to Namibia - had read the guidebooks but needed Gwynneth to really sort us out and she provided us with a tour of Namibia which encompassed many fantastic experiences of a wonderful country with great people.

When we tell people about the holiday they are surprised, intrigued, interested. It was one of the safest and most relaxing holidays of our experience and we have been a few places.

If you are interested in going to Africa - Namibia has it all - go!" Read full review: 23 nights in Africa; 20 on a Namibia trip

"Difficult to imagine how it could have been bettered." Read full review: 17 nights in Africa; 15 on a Zambia safari

"An excellent honeymoon that we will never forget that has given us a real taster of Africa. We will be back !

Suggestions for improvement:

It would be useful rethinking your advice on luggage weight limits . You may have been giving official figures but on proflight there was no strict weight limit in practice." Read full review: 13 nights in Africa; 12 on a Zambia safari

"Well done Expert Africa! Ellie was really well informed and helped us throughout.

Everything was organised perfectly and both Ellie and Claire were well informed about the Impala Camp, Fumba and Zanzibar Coffee House. I think it really helped that they had actually been there (saw Claire in the Impala visitors' book!!)

A great service. You were recommended to us by friends and we wouldn't hesittate to do the same should any of our friends be thinking about travelling to Africa.

The guide book was a good read too....

Suggestions for improvement:

Not really! A very presonal, well informed and very efficient service. Not much to improve on here...

Perhaps could have mentioned that buying a visa on arrival in Tanzania for $50 was an option? Wouldn't have really affected us but might be worht mentioning if anybody forgets before going." Read full review: 13 nights in Africa; 7 on a Zanzibar holiday

"We had a fabulous experience where the goal was to relax and take in the scenery on the island of Zanzibar. We greatly appreciate the fantastic expertise of Chris McIntyre and Ann Lederman, without whom this trip would not have been possible. The entire trip was planned on short notice, and was complicated by our own unreachability while traveling during the planning process. Also making things difficult were several itinerary changes that were unexpected but necessary.

We felt to be in great hands with the team at Expert Africa, and Ann in particular made a potentially difficult trip easy with her speed and incredible resourcefulness. In one instance, she was able to orchestrate hand delivery of an airline ticket to me in Arusha, Tanzania, when e-ticketing was unavailable and I was in-transit through Africa. Though I am an American, living in San Francisco, and Expert Africa is a tour operator based in the U.K., I always felt your services were instantly accessible, to a greater extent than even locally based tour operators in Africa.

We will always be grateful for your fantastic work in putting together our honeymoon, and if we ever have the wonderful opportunity of another vacation in Africa, we would use your services in a heartbeat.

Thanks again;

Suggestions for improvement:

We felt we received exceptional service, and have no suggestions for improvement." Read full review: 5 nights in Africa; 1 on a Zanzibar holiday

"Our overall experience was what we dreamed of. Africa is a unique untouched beauty. We would definitely recommend this trip to our friends excluding the Beyt al Chai experience. In the end we did accepted this as an adventure at Zanzibar island, but it wasn't a pleasant thing to happen since it was our honeymoon, if it was in other trip we wouldn't have been so disappointed.

The game drives were great, even with the fact of missing the migration at the Serengeti. The CC Africa lodges are amazing, the staff is very friendly. Everything is great there! It's a worthwhile experience. No one should miss it!

The Matemwe Retreat is all fantastic..and as we said before our butler was tireless!

This trip was everything that we expected. We are very looking forward to go back to Africa very soon." Read full review: 14 nights in Africa; 7 on a Zanzibar holiday

"The trip exceeded our expectations in every way. The tourist infrastructure in Namibia is outstanding, with the quality of the hotels, courtesy of the people and maintenance of the roads putting much of the UK and Europe to shame.

This was not a cheap holiday, but we felt that it was money well spent and would love to return. We saw and photographed far more than we had expected and this will provide us with many wonderful memories for the future.

We found that we used much more cash on the trip than expected. Fuel is now N$8 to N$9 per litre meaning that refilling tank was around N$400 at each petrol station (6 fills for 3000km). No petrol station we visited accepted cards. Needed more cash for tips, park entry fees etc than anticipated. Had informed our UK bank that we were travelling to Namibia, but they still blocked debit card as soon as it was used in ATM. They left message on UK phone to ring them back -not a lot of help in Namibia!

Fortunately credit card remained functional (had phoned their security dept before leaving rather than relying on website link). Initially took GDP£400 in SA rand, but took out further N$6000 to cover expenses en route. Had to draw this over three days in Swakopmund as ATMs seemed reluctant to give too much in one go. Banks close at 3.30 in afternoon, so not easy to access them if out on trips." Read full review: 19 nights in Africa; 14 on a Namibia trip