Reviews of safaris to North-west Kalahari & Panhandle

"A great holiday which fully met our expectations." Read full review: 18 nights in Africa; 15 on a Namibia trip

"Our safari was perfect, topping and tailing the excitement of the mobile safari with some more conventional lodges.

Lucy was extremely helpful in putting together this itinerary. She helpfully guided us away from a “single species” safari and that led us to consider her suggestion of the Private Mobile Safaris which we enjoyed so much that we are already planning another safari with him. We organised our own flights to and from the UK and Lucy very kindly and unprompted arranged for a meet and greet at Johannesburg airport which was extremely useful in speeding us on our journey.

Lucy was good at humouring us with our preference for land transfers and these were very successful and enjoyable (albeit sometimes in a bone shaking way). We saw parts of Chobe that we wouldn’t otherwise see, saw species we otherwise might not have seen, and we gained an appreciation for the size of the park.

She also dealt well with our special requests and liaising with Andrew.

Altogether, it was an exhilarating safari and one that we probably would not have been able to design without the help of Lucy and Expert Africa." Read full review: 14 nights in Africa; 8 on a Botswana safari

"Thank you for putting this holiday together for us. You did a brilliant job and when things went a little wrong at the beginning with our missed flight connection you helped sort it out for us even on a Saturday.

I will and have already recommended you." Read full review: 15 nights in Africa; 7 on a Namibia trip

"Our trip was utterly memorable - we had a wonderful time. Namibia provides such a diverse landscape - from desert to the lushness of the Caprivi Strip.

We are glad that we did the itinery we did - of course one learns things for next time! We would not have bothered with Swakopmund - we did not find it an attractive place at all. What we really wanted to do from there was a flight down over Soussevlei but were unable to get booked on anything. Had we known about this in advance we could have booked a flight earlier but of course recognise that no tour operator can tell the clients everything! With hindsight another day in Soussevlei would have been useful to have had more time to explore and climb the dunes.

The whole trip went very smoothly indeed apart from entering Zimbabwe - we did not know that you still need a Covid certificate to enter there and also $55 cash for the visa - it would have been useful to have been told this - thankfully we had a very helpful assistant on our transfer from Botswana who baled us out. But without exception all other transfers etc when super smoothly which was great.

Suggestions to help us improve our trips or our service:

Gosh - it's a hard enough job trying to get a handle on what the client wants I don't know how you could do it any better!" Read full review: 22 nights in Africa; 16 on a Namibia trip

"Excellent.

I would try to combine trip to Okavango into one day if possible. I understand concerns with border crossing (as I had them) but very fast even though we lost power and were held up. I also would have spent another day at Okonjiwa although it would have broken my budget.

As Welwitschia Drive took so long and the map was so bad we ended up climbing Dune 7 at 6:30 pm which was a blessing. The sand was cool and climb was easy. In general I highly recommend the trip.

I will say we were rather unique travelers in that we were not looking for the massive herds and numerous predators. We had seen that before. Our interest was in the smaller things, nocturnal animals, unique environments and sustainable responses to those environments. So this might not be for everyone but worked perfectly for us." Read full review: 15 nights in Africa; 10 on a Namibia trip

"We found the booking process with Tracy very straightforward, especially as we had only contacted her about 10 weeks prior with our idea of a trip to either Kenya or back to Namibia. Tracy was able to reserve all the lodges for us, and present an itinerary for our approval very quickly, after we showed an interest in the 'Pygmy Mouse' safari.

Having used Expert Africa before, we once again found the quality of the service exceptional, coupled with benefiting from the teams in depth knowledge of the countries we were visiting. We once again found Namibia to be a wonderful country, and very easy to self drive around. We absolutely loved exploring the areas of Botswana on our itinerary, and meeting the friendly people of Zimbabwe around the amazing Victoria Falls. Every petrol station we stopped at had fuel available, and all accepted payments by card or in cash.

All lodges have Wifi, usually available in the main lodge area, but we found quite often our room would be close enough to this to be able to use it there. The was a noticeable difference between the quality of the roads in Namibia (good) when compared to those we used in Botswana (not so good)." Read full review: 20 nights in Africa; 12 on a Namibia trip

"We have already recommended expert Africa and Maruska many times during and after out trip. We had already done one trip through expert Africa 6 years ago and so we knew we were going to get a great service and Maruska had such a great handle on our needs and what would suit us we trusted her recommendations and knew it would work for us.

Suggestions to help us improve our trips or our service: There was only one area where I think it could have been helpful to understand a little more which was crossing the border from Botswana back into Namibia. This seemed to be far more officious and complex than going from Namibia to Botswana. For example - we ended up at the board queued behind a long line of lorries ( about 20) - but we luckily decided to chance it and drive past them to the front and it turned out that was the right thing to do but had we not taken the risk we probably would have been in the queue for 2 hours. Also we did take a bit of time to work out the tipping position as we were reading the book the information on our documents and then the local information. We worked it out in the end but real clarity on tipping guides directly and specifically and then tip box with an average daily tip probably would be helpful ( but maybe we were being to sensitive about this)." Read full review: 19 nights in Africa; 15 on a Namibia trip

"Excellent: it lived up to expectations, after the two year wait caused by Covid, we thoroughly enjoyed the holiday. Everything ran very smoothly, all of the lodges were good and we saw nearly all of what we hoped to see!

The food was generally very good but we did notice that when we went from one Wilderness Safaris Lodge to another the food options were rather similar because they seemed to work off the same menus!

In retrospect, we would have liked three nights somewhere. Perhaps at Ongava? If we were to have cut a destination it would probably have been one of Nxamaseri or Kazile Island Lodge where you are in both cases on the river, although we liked them both in their different ways.

The driving was generally OK but we did have three long days of driving early on almost wholly on untarred roads. Later on in Caprivi the roads were excellent. We got one puncture - caused by a screw and not the roads!

Whilst we were warned it would be cold at night it was more than that. In a lot of places it did not warm up until the afternoon, when it did become hot. We happened to encounter a lot of windy days which made it worse. On game drives you are perched up in an open sided vehicle and so the airspeed makes the cold seem much worse than the temperature would suggest. We took fleeces and gilets but a wind proof coat would have been better than a fleece. That said May still seemed a good time to go, however, because it was before the coldest time, and after the rainy season, and the lodges were not very busy and so there were no big crowds on the game drives.

Star attractions:
- Sesriem and the dunes
- Damaraland and the Daro Nawas lodge
- Ongava
- Muchenje" Read full review: 22 nights in Africa; 14 on a Namibia trip

"The trip went beyond our expectations for adventure, learning, excitement and fun. I believe Expert Africa made the trip a big success because they are a full service safari planning company. The website and staff provided all that was needed for making decisions and getting the right arrangement. We spent three weeks on the trip that involved 11 accommodations, three airline flights, driving 2800 km on the left side of the road and numerous guides, staff and assistants. That it all went well and left us wishing for more meant they must be doing something right." Read full review: 21 nights in Africa; 11 on a Namibia trip

"Except for the very bad experience with Bidvest Car Hire (hired through Expert Africa), once again, we had very good experiences using Expert Africa for assisting with planning and booking the trip. We got highly qualified, fast and efficient help from Tracy Lederer from Expert Africa putting together a good trip to this part of Africa, where we have traveled may times, although were were late out booking.

We look forward to use Expert Africa again (our travel agent for the Southern parts of Africa)." Read full review: 29 nights in Africa; 21 on a Namibia trip