Zimbabwe: reviews from our travellers

"We loved every minute of our trip.

It was very well planned, lots of different activities and sceneries. All the transfers went smoothly.

All in all a truly wonderful holiday! We will always remember these special 2 weeks!

Suggestions to help us improve our trips or our service:

No. It was just great!" Read full review: 12 nights in Africa; 8 on a Zambia safari

"We cannot thank Expert Africa enough! This has been the trip of a lifetime, largely to do with the time spent on the organisation and the attention to detail by Tracy Lederer.

The trip was initially put together by Richard Ball, who has since left the Company and then taken over by Tracy, who gave us great confidence. Covid then hit and we had to postpone our trip twice, but at no point did we feel any concern that it was not going to go ahead or that it would not be what we had hoped for.

At the last moment one airline went bust, a few days before our departure but Tracy had got seats held on another airline before we even got in touch with her. The trip itself went really well, without a hitch. At every step we were met and guided across borders, through airports and onto transfers. The lodges that had been recommended were ideal and as we had hoped, the mobile safari was a real highlight.

Thank you to everyone at Expert Africa who worked so hard to make this a truly memorable and extremely enjoyable holiday.

Suggestions to help us improve our trips or our service:

We would not have changed a thing. Thank you for all that you did." Read full review: 15 nights in Africa; 11 on a Botswana safari

"Everything from start to finish was superb.

From the initial chat about what I'd like to do, to the return, was handled exceptionally well by Meg and the whole Expert Africa team. You couldn't be in better hands." Read full review: 6 nights in Africa; 4 on a Botswana safari

"Very happy with the manner in which our trip, which had to be re-organised twice due to Covid, was handled by Lucy and, on one occasion, Chris. Nothing was too much trouble for them.

We were particularly impressed that, on departure from UK day, Lucy made telephone contact to advise that our airline for one of our flights had been grounded and she had already arranged alternative flights.

We would definitely use Expert Africa in future.

I would not recommend Machaba camp to guests looking for Wild Dog sightings as there are very few in the area. It also seems Botswana has very few cheetah apart from Chobe area so not great for those with an interest in them." Read full review: 12 nights in Africa; 8 on a Botswana safari

"Overall it was brilliant" Read full review: 12 nights in Africa; 8 on a Botswana safari

"We could not have been happier with the overall experience from booking through execution of our trip. Tracy Lederer was responsive and knowledgeable every step of the way. And thanks to COVID, she had three years to work with us on making the experience happen.

We stayed in Victoria Falls 3 nights to recover from the long journey and enjoy the Falls and Zambezi River experience. We had a 9-night mobile safari with 1-night stays in lodges before and after. Before to "transition" from Vic Falls area and at end to "transition" from mobile safari to the long journey home. All bookings, transfers, meals, etc were executed as expected with high quality service.

We found Tracy to be very helpful and honest in her guidance with us. The changing requirements due to COVID added more considerations for her and us to balance....and that all went smoothly with her help.

If we book more travel to Africa, we will definitely request to work with Tracy." Read full review: 17 nights in Africa; 11 on a Botswana safari

"We were so happy to finally get to Botswana 3 years after we originally booked.

Expert Africa were excellent at arranging for the trip to be rolled forward each year due to covid restrictions. The recommended camps were excellent choices and we enjoyed that all 3 camps were quite different.

Lucy was an excellent source of information and very responsive to all our queries. When our flight from Vic Falls to Joburg was cancelled at short notice, she was quick to arrange an alternative from Livingstone so that we still made our international flight back to London.

Suggestions to help us improve our trips or our service:

Everything was excellent. A trip of a life time and well worth waiting for." Read full review: 13 nights in Africa; 10 on a Botswana safari

"Claire is a Rock Star. Attention to detail and trip planning was perfect.

Thanks again Claire!" Read full review: 9 nights in Africa; 9 on a Zimbabwe safari

"This was my fourth trip to Africa, but my first to Botswana, and it was the most rewarding. Sightings in three of the five camps visited were incredible - cheetahs, leopards, pairs of mating lions, mating hippos, and fighting giraffes and impalas. As a solo and older traveler, I really appreciated the friendliness, hospitality and inclusiveness shown by the Botswana people.

Overall the accommodation was excellent, as was the food and service, and the guiding generally exceptional. Having had multiple hip surgeries, I was so grateful my agent Maruska Adye-Rowe had done an excellent job in securing accommodation close to the main lodges, and preferential seating on the game drives. Maruska not only rearranged my whole schedule due to the pandemic, but also remained on top of my itinerary noting the cancellation my British Airways homeward flight from Victoria Falls, and arranging and paying for a new flight from Livingstone. The flight arrangements from camp to camp, and the transfers by Wild Horizons between Botswana, Zimbabwe and Zambia were absolutely seamless.

Sadly I did not see any wild dogs on this trip, and elephant sightings were few, even at Chobe Elephant Camp. However, I was compensated by many "up close and personal" encounters with other animals, and thrilled at the huge variety of birds.

Suggestions to help us improve our trips or our service:

Both Maruska and Chris McIntyre were always available to answer any questions or concerns I had about this trip, and could not have been more helpful.

In hindsight, I wish I had probed for more information in terms of the manner in which the various camps operated, and also about the weather conditions. Being overly concerned about my luggage weight, I did not pack adequately for the very cold morning drives and huge swings in temperature. The camp schedules were also quite grueling for me - starting at 5:00 a.m. and going until after supper with very minimal "siesta breaks" in the hottest part of the day. However, I took some downtime at Okuti, where I also found a heavy fleecy jacket, and got my second wind!

Many thanks to you both for making this trip so memorable!" Read full review: 20 nights in Africa; 14 on a Botswana safari

"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