8 Days Tarangire, Serengeti, Ngorongoro & Manyara Budget Lodge Safari Tour

If you’re looking for a well organized and high value safari trip, look no further. I can’t recommend Travel Africa enough, if I could give 6 stars I would (and I’m pretty stingy with my 5 star ratings). Our safari was an 8 day, mid range, private wildlife safari and cultural excursion. Mohamed, from my first email, was very responsive and answered all my questions (I had so many questions!). He arranged our pick up and drop off (we had a very early departure) and greeted us the first day for a briefing of our trip and made sure to come by the hotel on our last day to send us off. The quality of your safari has everything to do with your guide and I’m convinced we had the best. You should absolutely request to have Omari as your guide (we took to calling him by his Tanzanian name of Mtanagi). He’s been guiding for 15 years and is really passionate about the animals, birds and history of the land, so he has so much information to offer. Because of his experience he knows so many of the other guides which is really helpful in finding animals. He had a real knack for putting us in the perfect viewing position for all the animals and he has an amazing eye for spotting animals. I actually challenged myself to find a big cat before he did, I did it once and felt pretty proud of myself. Beyond all this, we always felt safe with Mtanagi. He’s a skilled driver, he got us out of tricky spots in mud and was well prepared with all the safety tools and it’s clear he knows how to fix and deal with a safari rig. He’s a dad of 10 so he understood how it is traveling with kids (we have an 11 and 13 year old). I think what made us really love him was he was present with us, he shared about his life and asked about ours, he ate most of our meals with us (at the hotel it was rare to see guides eating dinner and breakfast with their clients). He treats all people with such kindness and care that it’s impossible not to love him. He took such amazing care of us, it felt really sad to say goodbye. Our accommodations were top notch. The organization and schedule was seamless but was never so ridged that we couldn’t adjust a little bit along the way. Things ran promptly which I appreciate. The rig was comfortable and roomy and well stocked with water, beer and wine which was a nice perk. There are so many tour companies and can be daunting in trying to figure out which one to go with. We felt like the value was high for the price and the experience was absolutely unforgettable.