Travel reviews by Mr & Mrs Z from Saratoga

"We initially booked this trip with Expert Africa in late February/early March, 2020. Then Covid hit and the world went into lockdown. Maruska was our contact person from the start, making the reservations and setting up the itinerary for us.

We went through many ups and downs over the course of these two years, never sure if indeed the trip would materialize. Initially we postponed the September, 2020 trip to 2021, but it still did not seem wise to go then, so we postponed it to August/September, 2022. If we could have gotten most of our deposit returned, we would have cancelled the entire trip, with all of the continued worries and anxiety that Covid was inflicting on the world.

As Expert Africa has a firm policy of not returning deposits, we postponed the trip again to 2022. We are so glad we did! It all turned out fabulous, and thankfully, we remained healthy.

Throughout this long postponement, with the changes involved, Maruska was always exceedingly polite, understanding, and respectful of our worries and concerns. She did an extraordinary job arranging our trip, which involved four different countries, multiple flights, and many different camps.

The organization was outstanding and everything was seamless.

Truly incredible attention to detail. Thank you.

Suggestions to help us improve our trips or our service:

Can’t think of any."

Feedback response

We’re so glad that these travellers had such a fantastic time when they were finally able to travel – after so many delays and issues due to the Covid pandemic.

Throughout the pandemic, Expert Africa’s policy was to try to balance the needs of our travellers, our team and the many people at our camps in Africa. This wasn’t always easy, but we feel it was the only way to be fair.

We could not offer all of our travellers automatic refunds of deposits, regardless of their trip's circumstances, as this would have left the camps unable to support their teams at a dire time for them. Instead we asked that where travel might be possible and legal, they either travel or postpone with no loss of deposit. This meant no-one would lose out.

We understood that this meant asking our travellers to take a leap of faith with us in believing things would improve. We really appreciate that the vast majority of our travellers, like this party, agreed to this and then went on to have such a fantastic time when they did eventually travel.