Camping Serengeti Review
| Safari Location: |
Serengeti, Ngorongoro Crater Tanzania |
|
Duration: |
Five nights,
February 2005 |
|
Traveller Details: |
Nick Rienstra,
Australia. Five people in the group. |
|
Serengeti Review
Interview Questions
|
|
Where did you stay and how
was the organization of the trip by the operator? |
We camped for four nights
and stayed in a resort just outside Arusha… I can’t remember – a lake near
Arusha.
What were the camping facilities like?
It was
good. It was very dry, there wasn’t much water but that wasn’t their problem.
The campsites have no fences around them so there were some nocturnal visitors.
We saw
footprints of a big cat, probably lion. We saw footprints a couple of times.
Once it was lion and another time we weren’t sure what it was… it could have
been a cat.
What did a typical breakfast and dinner on your Serengeti review safari consist of?
Breakfast
was continental. Dinner was like spaghetti or a curry or something like that.
The food was quite good.
| Did
your safari company perform well, or was there any problems with their
service? |
Back to
the Questions |
It wasn't
all that good. The animals were good but the service and whatever wasn't all
that good… too many people in the vehicle.
There were
5 people in a Toyota twin carrier, but there was the cook and the driver as well so it
was 7. It was pretty cramped and we were all big people.
They
weren’t terribly easy to negotiate with. In the beginning, when we were still
trying to get our point across that there were five big people which was too
many for the vehicle that they didn’t really care. That was while we were still
in the town near Arusha, I can’t remember the name of the town. Anyway we were
still there. They still had the opportunity to change the vehicle but didn’t
bother.
Did you book this trip before you went?
No, in
Dar es Salaam.
Four of
the “big 5”… didn’t see leopard, but saw lion – yes, 4 of the big 5. In the
Ngorongoro we saw plenty of wildlife. It was a particularly good morning that we
had there. In total we saw about 80 or 90 birds and about 28 or 30 mammals.
What would you say the wildlife spotting highlight of your Serengeti review safari was?
Probably
some lions in the Ngorongoro. Oh and just after a kill in the Serengeti National Park. Well,
immediately after the kill, the lions had a zebra. I didn’t see the kill but saw
it, like maybe five minutes later.
What would you say the most useful item in your luggage was?
Digital
camera, and bird book.
We were
ushered to breakfast, or a cup of tea or coffee first, then breakfast and then
usually a game drive straight after and then we were on the road a fair bit.
After the
game drive it was usually driving to somewhere else. Had lunch on the way
somewhere, stop about 2 or 3 o’clock, set up camp.
They’d do
a late afternoon game drive and then have a late dinner, we had dinner at about
8 o’clock, usually in the darkness, and then go to bed. They weren’t a terribly
sociable lot, so it was to bed fairly early, and we got up early.
Ask questions about who you’re going with and how many
people, what’s the vehicle size and that sort of thing.
More tips on choosing a good safari operator...
And see if you can ascertain how much the other people are
paying because we found discrepancies in our group – I paid the cheapest, but
some of the people in our group paid like 60-70% more than I have. There were
two Irish people that had bought in Ireland, the other three of us bought in Dar
es Salaam. We all paid different prices.
On a
scale of 1 to 10, how would you rate your Serengeti review safari overall?
I’ve done a few trips, probably about 10 trips to Africa…
this Serengeti review, out of ten, I’d say about 6.
|
