01 Sep 2024
I travelled with my family, 4 people in total, with my two 23- and 26-years old children. The 11 days tour included six days of safari and three days in Zanzibar. The travel was organised online through the Evaneos operator which redirected us to a direct contact with Savannah Explorers. With the assistance of our Savannah Explorers' local expert, Sultan, we managed to organise a fully customised tour, including safari in Tarangire, Serengeti and Ngorongoro, plus 3 days in Zanzibar. The local expert was very efficient and fast in replying to all my iterations, proposing excellent solutions both in terms of destinations and lodging.
All the tour details were taken care by Savannah Explorers, and we could travel in full safety from the arrival in Zanzibar to the departure back to Italy. Everything went absolutely smoothly. The local expert took care of us at every relevant step (transfers, accommodations, etc.) but also solved unwelcome problems like baggage lost by KLM in Amsterdam: Savannah Explorers people made all the necessary steps to get the lost luggage and deliver it to us, while we were enjoying our Safari in Serengeti. During our stay, contacts with the local expert were extremely easy through WhatsApp and the replies quick (essentially in real time) and efficient. That was very important to make us feel constantly supported every day.
The guide provided by Savannah Explorers for the safari, John, was exceptional. He guided us through Serengeti with incredible experience, bringing us always in the right place at the right moment. He showed great respect to the environment (you could see him suddenly stopping in the grasslands, to collect an abandoned plastic bottle or other garbage) and transmitted us all his enthusiasm and love for the wildlife (animals, plants), his homeland, with its breathtaking landscapes, and his people. In addition, he was able to drive for hours with great patience and in full safety along the challenging tracks of Serengeti, giving us plenty of time to take pictures and admire all the beautiful things he brought us to see.
Accommodation solutions proposed by the operator were excellent and fully compliant with our wishes: a beautiful lodge for the first and last night in the safari area, to restore ourselves, and tented camps in the Serengeti, for a full immersion in the wildlife.
If you go to Serengeti, you must stay in tented camps for a full immersion in the wildlife!
Tented camps are exceptionally comfortable. Tents feature private bathroom with shower, as well as very comfortable beds, still preserving the experience of full immersion in the bush, with zebras grazing close to the tents at night and lions roaring in the distance. Surprisingly enough, tented camps feature an excellent free internet connection, that allowed us to keep in contact daily with our relatives in Italy! (btw: no need for any expensive telephone option to call your beloved: a daily WhatsApp video call is as easy as in your home country when you are at the tented camps!). We stayed two nights at Kifaru Tented Lodge in central Serengeti and one night in Kon Tiki Mobile Tented Camp, in northern Serengeti.
In both cases we found extremely friendly, efficient and supportive personnel, as well as an excellent kitchen! The tents were impeccably clean and after a long day in the savannah we could restore ourselves by drinking a fresh Kilimanjaro beer.
Furthermore, tented camps are very sustainable structures, being essentially fully self-sufficient from the energy supply point of view, with solar panels for electricity and hot water production. Their impact on the environment is minimal being perfectly integrated in the savannah.
Our tour included 5 days of safari, including Tarangire park which is absolutely to be visited and really surprising! Tarangire features a high density of animals, including, among others, lions, elephants, zebras, giraffes. Elephants walking in the riverbed for their mud shower were an unforgettable experience. We then moved to central Serengeti, with its breathtaking landscapes, as well as the beautiful animals (we saw 4 of the big 5) and to northern Serengeti, to admire the awesome great migration with hundreds of thousands of gnus grazing in the immense grasslands, as well as their dramatic attempts to cross the river Mara. If you go to Serengeti in July-August, including a day in northern Serengeti is mandatory!
Finally, we spent a whole day in Ngorongoro, another place that you cannot miss by any means: truly the eighth world wonder! If you plan a tour in Tanzania, you definitely must include a day in Ngorongoro. There, thanks to John, we were able to see also the last missing big 5: the rhino!
We finally spent three days in Zanzibar in an excellent resort proposed by Savannah Explorers. To be frank, if you want to stay a few days in Zanzibar, you probably better go there before the safari. At least to me, the safari experience overwhelmed any possible expectation and eventually the stay in Zanzibar was somewhat "average" after that.
Clearly not a fault of the operator, but Zanzibar has a severe problem of eco-sustainability: plastics is ubiquitous and the beautiful white coralline beaches are plagued by an unacceptable level of plastic garbage, notwithstanding the restless effort by the hotel personnel to clean up. Nevertheless, our stay in Zanzibar was excellent, the hotel beautiful and the personnel friendly and efficient.
To conclude, if you plan to travel to Tanzania for a safari, I enthusiastically suggest you do it through Savannah Explorers!