Reviews of safaris to Kalahari's Salt Pans

"This was such a great holiday.We were so pleased we tried three camps in different areas and we loved them all. Kwando Safaris who ran the camps should be complemented on their camps, staff, service, food and general all round attention to guests comfort and safari experience.The animal sightings were marvellous and probably better than we had anticipated and the Okavango Delta is just beautiful. The whole trip was a huge success.

Note for Megan.........bet you wish you were at the Durban Trade Fair.....we met several people who worked in the travel industry and were vising different camps and some of them were in Africa for 3 weeks!!

Suggestions to help us improve our trips or our service:

We were completely happy with all aspects of your service. Thank you Megan for your suggestions , for putting together our itinerary ,introducing us to Kwando Safaris and organizing our travel arrangements." Read full review: 10 nights in Africa; 9 on a Botswana safari

"Botswana was our 5th trip to Africa on safari holiday. We had very high expectations on the basis of outstanding previous experiences. But we returned very disappointed. There were few exciting moments and our memories, quite honestly, are of relative dullness. Our photos convey this; we have relatively few and those which we have are not as good as others taken on previous trips. The meerkats and vic falls were the exception but this was an extremely expensive way to see them!!

There was just no excitement. We were expecting the delta to be lush and teeming with wildlife but in reality it is just a series of islands interspersed with wet bits. We went all the way to Botswana and didn't even see a hippo! And we saw just one elephant in the water. You see more in Kenya! The country is also very flat and visually dull. Even the short flights are boring.

The guides are all very pleasant but come across as bored. Where is the enthusiasm?

It's hard to put it onto words without coming across as overly moany. We regret going, to be honest, as it is an expensive country (why???) and we could have had 4 good other holidays in place of this one. We won't be recommending Botswana to anyone.

This appears to be a country which is cleverly marketed but fails to deliver in reality." Read full review: 14 nights in Africa; 10 on a Botswana safari

"Thank you. We greatly enjoyed our trip. Everything was well organized and Footsteps and Camp Kalahari were great.

I did however really disliked everything about Sandibe. And my feeling is that other camps / people share this feeling (already knew so). But it didn't spoil my trip as we worked our way around it as much as possible.

All together great memories and glad I chose Expert Africa to help with organizing my trip.

Diederik" Read full review: 8 nights in Africa; 8 on a Botswana safari

"This was a great trip, our eighth with Expert Africa since 2006, which entirely met our expectations and requirements.

Megan (and Lucy before her) did a great job on getting quite a complex itinerary to work. Thanks to all the team." Read full review: 16 nights in Africa; 6 on a Botswana safari

"It was spectacular. I am still amazed by the wildlife and the environment in general. Everything worked as planned which reflects very favourably on your services (within reason each camp was a rather different ecosystem, all connections worked as planned incl the transfer to Vic Falls, no abundance of other travelers and every camp was in a stunning setting).

I had some reservations about visiting this time of year (it was originally anticipated for October), but it appears we saw every species that can somewhat reasonably be expected; and more than one sighting for almost all of them. We did have rain in Botswana, but all in all we were not much affected by it: at Kwara they installed roofs on the Land Cruisers after one really wet game drive; at Nxai Pan there was rain during one game drive and the roads were really gutted and muddy but both were OK, at Lebala we got really wet once (no roof) and really lucky on a few other drives. [Not sure if the amount of rain we encountered was typical, or whether we hit a relatively dry spell; we encountered no rain in Namibia which is having a late start to the rainy season this year].

Even on our subsequent travel in Etosha (and elsewhere in Namibia) we saw incredible amounts and variety of wildlife, including rhinos, leopard, aardwolf and hyena. (Here we had to do our own guiding and tracking though ;-)

Thank you for your services and input. I have recommended you.

Suggestions for improvements:

Satellite phones might have come in handy with Profile Safari's plane mishap/crash in Etosha as well. [Nothing to do with you or us, but it happened when we were there]." Read full review: 12 nights in Africa; 12 on a Botswana safari

"It was a fantastic trip, we enjoyed every moment (apart from me feeling ill on the little planes!). Tracy suggested Susuwe Island Lodge, Tubu Tree and Baines Camp and they could not have been better suggestions, we were delighted with them. They were all a bit different to each other in style and in slightly different habitats so we saw different things, which is what we wanted.

We had a rather lengthy journey from the Royal Livingstone Hotel to Susuwe. We noticed from the map that there is what appears to be a direct road north of the Zambezi and then over a bridge but we were not taken that way, we assumed that it can't be a very good road. However, we learned when we reached Susuwe that it is a good road, a modern bridge and the journey takes 3 hours door to door. It took us 6 hours.

First, 1 hour drive to the Zambezi, checked out of Zambia, speedboat across the river, checked into Botswana, were driven 10 minutes by a woman who was on her mobile the entiire time then transferred to another vehicle and driver - why? He then drove us all the way to meet the vehicle from Susuwe, but we had to check out of Botswana and into Namibia. The journey took twice as long and presumably because of this cost us twice as much, we had to wait at the various immigration and emmigration posts and got another Botswana stamp in the passport to no useful purpose. We would still have been coming back this way of course to Kasane to fly to Tubu Tree, so going there a different way would have made a round trip which would have been more interesting as well as far more convenient. We would like your comments on this please.

When we were offered to change from San Camp to Jacks Camp because of a photo shoot at San we were told there were "a couple" of other guests at Jacks. There were in fact about 12 other guests which is considerably more than "a couple". We immediately thought we shouldn't have changed as if we had been the only proper guests at San we would have had a guide to ourselves, whereas with so many other guests that was not likely. We thought this was very misleading wording by Uncharted Africa.

However, by accident rather than design we did in fact have a - very good - guide to ourselves so were mollified! We were pleased overall that we changed to Jacks, it was quite an experience. Thank you to Megan who pointed out that I was particularly interested in the meerkats and they arranged 2 visits to them into our schedule so that was lovely, and I adored having them crawling over me!

I was amused to read in the Bradt travel guide that there are no meerkats in the Makgadikgadi park. This is plainly not the case!" Read full review: 14 nights in Africa; 8 on a Botswana safari

"As first-time safari travellers with 2 young kids, there were a few nerves as we stepped off the plane in Johannesburg, but all the detailed planning worked beautifully and the whole trip was executed incredibly well." Read full review: 11 nights in Africa; 8 on a Botswana safari

"We had a wonderful time. Our Expert Africa consultant, Maruska Adye, was excellent!!! Her initial response to our queries was the reason we choose this company to help plan our safari. Her advice was invaluable. I would highly recommend her, and Expert Africa, to anyone planning a safari.

Although there are several places that we would not return to, we had a great time experiencing them on this trip. Once you have visited some places, there is no reason to return. If we were fortunate enough to plan another safari I would certainly ask Maruska and Expert Africa for their help and guidance.

Suggestions to help us improve our trips or our service:

[Ed: Referring to our electronic feedback form]

Like to be able to save the file to our PC or at least print it out as one document, including the full comments...not just the part visible on the form." Read full review: 13 nights in Africa; 13 on a Botswana safari

"Just one dissatisfaction - not all of our car transport turned up on time, and indeed the first one did not turn up at all.

One major recommendation - go in November! It is supposedly low season, but we saw a huge amount and had a fantastic time, with the greatly added benefit of having the vehicles and often camp to ourselves in the vast majority of places.

We have never been on an organised tour holiday, so I was apprehensive that we would be herded around like pack animals and miss out on the unique experience you get when you travel individually. This was not the case. I was very happy with Expert Africa and would certainly use you again if we booked another luxury trip." Read full review: 14 nights in Africa; 8 on a Botswana safari

"Overall, our expectations were exceeded on most fronts. There are 2 minor issues, which bothered us:

1. Tipping. It seemed odd to us to pay between 400-700 dollars pp and day and then be expected to pay another 5-15$ pp and day for the guide and something for the staff.

Of course, everybody emphasizes one does not HAVE to tip, but that does not really make all that much sense. Either tipping is common and therefore expected, i.e. part of a guide's salary - in which case those 5-15$ should simply be added to the bill as a matter of course, and from the outset - or it is not, in which case the practice should be rather discouraged.

2. The song & dance routine upon arrival at the Ker & Downey camps. This is obviously not a serious issue, but rather by the by.

We cringed a little each time we were welcomed by the camp's staff with a welcoming sond and dance routine . Not because the singing and dancing was bad (it wasn't bad at all), but it was a bit too much for us. And we were far from the only one guests who felt that way.
Something for the camps to think about maybe." Read full review: 10 nights in Africa; 10 on a Botswana safari