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Tafika
Tafika
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Tafika
Tafika

Reviews of Tafika

Wildlife sightings and reviews

340 independent comments and wildlife information from our travellers who have visited Tafika and kindly agreed to share their thoughts. They do not necessarily represent the views of Expert Africa

Wildlife sightings by our travellers
Starting in May-2018, 97 of our travellers have recorded their wildlife sightings at Tafika.
Lion

84% success

Leopard

92% success

Wild dog

42% success

Hippo

100% success

Zebra

99% success

Giraffe

99% success

Elephant

98% success

Buffalo

92% success

Spotted Hyena

92% success

Wildebeest

46% success

Eland

9% success

Roan antelope

3% success

Sable antelope

1% success

Aardvark

0% success

Pangolin

0% success

Showing 311-320 of 340
Duration
Arrival date
Mr C
Canada

"Tafika review"

4 nights Arrived 20 Sep 2008
"Tafika has everything. All of the staff at this lodge were great - helpful and friendly at all times. Very good leopard sightings, and excellent lion and serval sightings, as well as all other expected wildlife. Great birdlife as well. Guides were very knowledgeable and respectful for the welfare of the wildlife. An early morning ride in the microlight was a very unique treat and a highlight as well.

Meals were excellent.

I would love to visit this lodge again." See all these reviews: 15n in Zambia
Experience Report
Overall Rating:
Excellent

Location:
Excellent
Service:
Excellent
Activities:
Excellent
Rooms:
Excellent
Food:
Excellent
Facilities:
Excellent
Dr & Mrs C
Henley

"great base camp"

3 nights Arrived 20 Sep 2008
"John & Carol run a truly professional and very friendly set of camps. Tafica is ideal to start with as you can get all the photos from close up to animals from the vehicules. Later in the bushcamp they are further away and not so easy - but different - to photograph. We felt folk who started in the bush camps took far too long with impossible photo attempts as they did not go to a base camp like Tafica first.

The staff are all excellent and unlike at Kaingo we got introduced to each and could readily chat with them. The microlight flight is a must and John was wonderful to let me fly it - for those with windsurfing experience it is much the same.
The only very slight -ve is that the evening/night drive at 4 hours is a bit long as not much happens from 1600 to 1700 before the sundowner. 3 would be fine.

The lodges and food were excellent, and the menus transferred to the bushcamps work really well.
The guides are all excellent and knowledgable. We much liked the rule that vehicules should not radio to each other so that animals were not tracked by more than 1 vehicule. cf. At Kaingo there were radio contacts all the time and once 5 trucks tracking 1 leopard and cub. We found this upsetting, noisy and totally out of keeping.

Although it was nice to see another safari operator we felt that Coppinger Safaris have it perfectly for base and bush camp combinations. The flights and handovers to Kaingo were organised well .

It is nice being so far North and away from other camps. I would guess Mfuwe camps would be all over each other in the Park, whereas we saw no one else. Now to see if June/July 2009 is possible visit in the "greener" season." See all these reviews: 13n in Zambia
Experience Report
Overall Rating:
Excellent

Location:
Excellent
Service:
Excellent
Activities:
Excellent
Rooms:
Excellent
Food:
Excellent
Facilities:
Excellent
Mr & Mrs M
Nottingham

"Tafika and environs"

4 nights Arrived 20 Sep 2008
"Lovely location overlooking the Luangwa River, excellent food and guides. In particular Rory (top birder) and Bryan added considerably to our growing understanding and appreciation of the animals and avifauna from their in depth knowledge.

Night drives exceptional, several leopard seen including one with a cub, serval, porcupine, and loads of civets and genets. Other guests saw honey badger aswell whilst we were there. My impression is the Nsefu sector has fantastic game day and night. John and Carol Coppinger were most hospitable and my complimentary microlight flight for adjusting our booking was very enjoyable. John might wish to know that my film proves conclusively the vulture nest is a that of a Lappet.

An administrative error - mix up caused a slight downer and some inconvemnience at the end of our stay but these things are usually one-offs and can happen anywhere from time to time. I have already recommended Tafika to friends and colleagues my comment of sans pareil (in my African experience to date) jotted in the guestbook is a fair reflection." See all these reviews: 8n in Zambia
Experience Report
Overall Rating:
Good

Location:
Excellent
Service:
Good
Activities:
Good
Rooms:
Excellent
Food:
Good
Facilities:
Good
Four
Wokingham

"Tafika review"

1 night Arrived 19 Sep 2008
"Another very enjoyable stay with the Coppingers in all three camps.

The food was reasonable and the staff and guiding was outstanding." See all these reviews: 5n in Zambia; 5n in Tanzania
Experience Report
Overall Rating:
Excellent

Location:
Good
Service:
Good
Activities:
Good
Rooms:
Good
Food:
Average
Facilities:
Good
Dr B & Dr G
UK

"Tafika review"

1 night Arrived 20 Aug 2008
"Please see previous comments." See all these reviews: 11n in Zambia
Experience Report
Overall Rating:
Excellent

Location:
Excellent
Service:
Excellent
Activities:
Excellent
Rooms:
Excellent
Food:
Excellent
Facilities:
Excellent
Paul
North Yorkshire

"What can we say except this ws paradise"

4 nights Arrived 14 Aug 2008
"From the minute we arrived until the minute we left we felt like part of a big family -everyone so caring/thoughtful! Food, service, rooms, safaris all outstanding.

The safaris were wonderful and again our requests to see specific animals were always honoured. Still have scars from tsetse flies but realised we should have realised we would be good targets and used stronger insecticide??

Everybody here seemed so happy and that rubbed off. The Coppingers are a most welcoming couple and the microlite flight was magical - John's a star!!!" See all these reviews: 14n in Zambia
Experience Report
Overall Rating:
Excellent

Location:
Excellent
Service:
Excellent
Activities:
Excellent
Rooms:
Excellent
Food:
Excellent
Facilities:
Excellent
The Crocodiles
Utah

"Tafika review"

3 nights Arrived 11 Aug 2008
"John and Carol made us feel right at home and provided us with some terrific adventures." See all these reviews: 12n in Zambia
Experience Report
Overall Rating:
Excellent

Location:
Excellent
Service:
Excellent
Activities:
Excellent
Rooms:
Excellent
Food:
Excellent
Facilities:
Excellent
Mr & Mrs M
Kingston

"lions, lions, lions...."

3 nights Arrived 11 Aug 2008
"We had an unbelievable experience at Tafika. Staff/guides were highly professional, knowledgeable, and friendly. We saw a huge variety of wildlife - lions, elephants, hippos, leopards, hyena, ..... the list goes on. The 'camps' were comfortable, with great service and excellent food. Visit to the local village was informative. My wife also tried the microlighting and would recommend it highly!" See all these reviews: 10n in Zambia
Experience Report
Overall Rating:
Excellent

Location:
Excellent
Service:
Excellent
Activities:
Excellent
Rooms:
Excellent
Food:
Excellent
Facilities:
Good
Dr B & Dr G
UK

"Tafika review"

4 nights Arrived 9 Aug 2008
"We spent 5 nights in total at Tafika and thoroughly enjoyed it. John and Carol were very welcoming and everyone worked hard to make our stay memorable. The guides were very flexible and worked to accommodate people's wishes eg. walks, drives, cycling or visiting the school.

We saw a lot of game including leopards several times in the day and night, lions several times, porcupine, hyena, lots of hippo, elephants, giraffe and antelope. The guiding was excellent, although at Tafika the focus on game drives tended to be the animals rather than the whole environment. We found that the walking camps therefore complemented our stay at Tafika really well.

The food was excellent and we could not believe the varied menu that they were able to produce from the kitchen. We stayed in two different chalets at the start and end of our trip. Both were very comfortable. The water was always hot! We would have been grateful to have been warned however that the elephants visited the tree next to No.2 during the night to eat the fruit, although this was a welcome surprise." See all these reviews: 11n in Zambia
Experience Report
Overall Rating:
Excellent

Location:
Excellent
Service:
Excellent
Activities:
Excellent
Rooms:
Excellent
Food:
Excellent
Facilities:
Excellent
Partridge family
Kent

"Another top place to visit"

2 nights Arrived 6 Aug 2008
"Of the six camps that we stayed at during our two week trip, Tafika was the only one where our family of five had other guests staying there at the same time. Having been to some very remote camps over the previous ten days Tafika seemed like being back in the hub of civilisation, even though Tafika is actually still very remote.

The game viewing was fantastic, with a pride of 17 lion being seen by us one evening. Our guides Rory and Brian were excellent, and we enjoyed meeting with John and Carol Coppinger, and Heather the camp manager.

Our visit to the local village was a highlight of the entire trip and our donation of some clothes, shoes, childrens books and toys was well received. Hopefully we will be able to send more things out to the Coppingers for them to distribute over the coming months." See all these reviews: 6n in Zambia
Experience Report
Overall Rating:
Excellent

Location:
Excellent
Service:
Excellent
Activities:
Excellent
Rooms:
Excellent
Food:
Excellent
Facilities:
Excellent
Showing 311-320 of 340
98%
340 reviews of Tafika by travellers since August 2007
Overall rating by our travellers
313
24
2
1
0
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