Uganda Safaris and Gorilla Trekking

The expert travel planning by our tour planners was flawless. They gave us details and planning directions that were always helpful and on time. I never felt like I needed to do extra planning and when I had a concern, they always responded immediately. Even as we were in the middle of the trip and I had some concern about the bad weather, a tour planner responded almost immediately and did some research and contacted the flight people. The lodging in Arusha is unbelievable. Gibbs Farm near the crater is the same. Too much to tell on these two lodgings, but go to the web site. The Sanctuary Serengeti camp was great. Our tent overlooked the vast Serengeti from our high spot in the southwest area. Gorilla Sanctuary lodge at Bwindi Impenetrable Forest was fabulous.

The trip was absolutely wonderful. Thanks to our travel planner and guide, we were able to fit so much adventure into 12 days. Communication was always prompt and our planner quickly answered all of our questions leading up to and during the trip. The transfer from our Kenya guide to our Uganda guide was seamless. We had an issue with logistics in the last few days, but our planner helped us solve it quickly.

The only thing I would suggest they do differently: Our communication leading up to the Uganda portion of the trip was with the operations manager. We didn't meet our guide (or know they weren’t the operations manager) until the morning we left for Kibale. It would have been nice to have some communication with our guide beforehand as there were a couple of things on the itinerary (prepared by the manager) that our guide seemed not to know anything about, namely a game drive in Queen Elizabeth Park.

Overall trip was OK except

1. The camp in Tanzania was considered 3 perhaps 4 star not 5 star.

2.We failed to see, other than for a shadowy form in the jungle vegetation, gorillas in Uganda after spending a lot of money and time going to that country. The Clouds Mountain Gorilla Resort, a 5 star resort, failed totally to look after our interest in ensuring we had the best opportunity to actually see and experience an encounter with the gorillas. Totally underwhelming and forgettable part of the trip and a total waste of time and money.

3.For the very first flight of the holiday we arrived at the Johannesburg airport to fly to Kenya 2 hours before the flight to be told that the flight had been cancelled and the next flight would be some 4 hours later (after having booked out of our hotels and therefore having no place to which to retreat to wait out the delay). The cancellation meant that we had to take a much later connecting flight to our final destination for that day arriving just before midnight to be told that we would need to be up at 5am in order to travel to the airport to get that days flight. There was no attempt to contact us to advise of the flight cancellation and the alternative arrangements as we would have expected from a  travel agent specialising in bespoke high cost  tours (we were left arguing with airline staff).

4.Our flight from Mara North Airstrip on 12 August was 1 hour late. There was attempt to contact us of notifying us of the delay. We had to contact the agency rep in Nairobi  to get them to contact the airline to find out what was going on and when we could  expect a plane to arrive. On top of this the departure time of our connecting flight to Entebbe had been bought forward 1 hour. Until we arrived in Nairobi we were not advised of this. There was no attempt to get our luggage from the Mara North flight expeditiously to ensure that no time was lost in making the transfer to the other Nairobi airport from which the connecting flight was leaving. Consequently we arrived at the check in counter at the other airport 1 minute late to have our luggage checked in for the flight to Entebbe. We were refused permission to check in and only after a very loud argument did they accede to allow our check in resulting in we only making it through customs and immigration with 2 minutes to spare. This whole experience could have been less stressful had the local agency taken some responsibility and initiative.