Travel reviews by Mr A & Ms M from Sante Fe

"These comments are very specific to us and might not be relevant to most of your clients. First and foremost, we were very happy with Expert Africa and can't find anything negative to say. Lyndsey was always helpful and responsive. The outfitters, guides and drivers were all excellent.

This was our sixth trip to East and South Africa, some of which were long and covered multiple countries. Only two were done with groups. This trip was very much a bucket list trip for us as we're 77 and 81 and finding physical limitations to our travel. (Our first trip to Africa was stopping in Nairobi on our way to India. We rented a jeep, a tent and two sleeping bags and drove all around the country.)

We had alway planned at some point to visit the Mountain Gorillas. We chose to go to the "easiest" accessible group. The trackers found the group deep in the brush and much which made getting to them difficult. The porters were a great help, always there to help us through the mud. It was a great experience but we were so exhausted by the day, we passed on the second. Realized our limitations but were really happy with the single visit.

Rwanda is an incredibly beautiful country with wonderful people, many of whom are survivors of their genocide. That realization can make a visit more complex than with other countries in the region but it was important to us. The current situation with respect to what was happening just miles away in the Congo was hard to ignore. What is presently going on in the U.S. and its worldwide implications made it even harder for us to be tourists as was the case on our other trips. So even though we were not worried about our personal safety, we just didn't feel comfortable going to the south to see the chimps. Note that we had hoped to see life along Lake Kivu but that wasn't possible in the present circumstances. One thing we were able to do with those days was to spend more time with a variety of the local people and engage in serious discussions with them.

We had spent a lot of time in the Serengeti on our Kenya trip and in 2011 on a long trip to Tanzania. Both these trips were in the dry season in the northern Serengeti. This time we decided to go the southern Serengeti to see the height of the migration. Our experience was great but not what we expected. The Nomad mobile camp was wonderful but the migration had passed a couple of days earlier. The first night in the camp there was an enormous rain storm that lasted well into the next day. The result was that the Southern Serengeti was flooded and most of the roads were impassible. We had a couple of interesting fun days going mostly overland for hours though the muck to catch up with the migration.

One thing we didn't realize is that the elephants and cape buffalo disappear into the forrest during the migration. We never saw a cape buffalo (except from the plane) and only two isolated elephants. We did see many groups of lions, a surprising number of cheetahs, a couple of leopards and many giraffes. In terms of what we enjoy the most, I'd recommend a dry season trip to the northern Serengeti. We also had similar experiences in terms of seeing a greater variety of large animals in Zambia and South Africa. But the main reason for our trip was the Mountain Gorillas so we're happy."

Feedback response

We are really pleased to hear that these travellers had such wonderful time in both Tanzania and Rwanda, although appreciate their feelings with regards to travel within Rwanda. This safari took place when it was advised against travel to the Gisenyi region of Rwanda, although we had ensured that these travellers route gave this region a wide berth and avoided Gisenyi. Rwanda remained safe for tourism, including the chimpanzee trekking in Nyungwe Forest, however we can appreciate that these travellers chose to adapt their plans to focus on cultural experiences around Kigali.

"We had a great trip. With the one exception we were more than happy with each place we stayed. The guides were all excellent. We were surprised at how good the food was. As non meat eaters, we were ready to make compromises but at every lodge, the cooks prepared us excellent meals.

We were also happy that we did the trip in the order we did the trip, We had just done a game oriented trip to Botswana, Zambia and Zimbabwe, so it was good to start with the Namib and end with Etosha.

We wound up driving 3000 km. It would have been nice to have picked up the car in Swakomund and then head to Damaraland. But I would not have wanted to miss either Wolvedans or Kulala and we probably could not have afforded all the flight to go from Windhoek to the Namib and Swakomund.

We hope to come back and be able to get further up to the Skeleton Coast and the Kunene River region.

Suggestions to help us improve our trips or our service:

None. Expert Africa was great to deal with. Very responsive, good advice. We did not have a single problem with any of the arrangements made by Expert Africa."