Davidh5466

Hello all, I have been reading the forum all night and know I am in the right place.
Many of you have a dearth of knowledge on this subject and I desperately need to tap into it.
After spending 4 days in Rwanda, My wife and I arrive at the Seronera airstrip (from Kigali) on 12/19/07...we have 10 days (until 12/29/07) before we depart from Arusha to Zanzibar.
I have looked at several tour operators and every camp/lodge/tent faciltiy there is.
It seems as if many of the itineraries are canned, prices are inflated and most of the operators have allegiances to specific properties.
We would like to experience a diverse tour, including but not limited to different accomodations and a mixture of driving (night and day), walking, canoeing safaris as well as non-safari items, such as meeting local tribes, visiting an orphanage, etc.
Can you please suggest a reasonable operator in terms of price, knowledge, reliabilty, flexibility, superior vehicles/guides, etc. and offer suggestions as to where we should be focusing our stay that time of year to experience the migration and game sightings as well as which accomodations are special/interesting.
After leaving Seronera airstrip, my plan was to stay in the south central serengeti for 2 days, then to south east (Ndutu) for 2 days. From the Serengeti we would go to Ngorongoro Crater for 2 nights-one day?
Then we would go to Tarangire (for 2-3 nights) with a day trip to Lake Manyara (is it worthwhile to got to Taragire/Manyara at this time of year?)
We were also thinking about Lake Eyasi, Kisima Ngeda for 1-2 nights.
We have a midrange budget and would like to alternate between midrange accomodations with one or two nights spent somewhere really nice. Any help/suggestions will be greatly appreciated. Thank you>
Davidh

Davidh5466

sorry I meant a plethora of knowledge - working backwards in the dictionary

plbk4

Davidh
My family and I returned last week form a long holiday that included a 10 day safari. Out route was almost the reverse of yours - we flew out of Seronera. I used Sunny Safaris and have nothing but praise for them. They are as budget or high priced as you ask them to be. They gave me the itinerary I wanted (after I changed it about 10 times), booked me into the lodges I wanted and did not try to push any preferrred lodges onto me. I used the Serena lodges, Ndutu Lodge and Kasini tented camp. Kasini was wonderful - upper end of the accommodation lists while the others were also of very high quality. We did a night drive at lake Manyara which was excellent. Our guide, Mapunda (Zebraman), was outstanding. An ex-ranger, he knew the animals and locations but was not too talkative and was happy to turn the engine off and sit and wait until we were ready to move. He was a good 4wder and the vehicle was very well maintained. Our 8 yo daughter did not want to leave him and cried when we flew out.
In regard to the time and location, it depends of course on where the migration is at the time you travel. The operators can advise with this. Meeting a local tribe is not something I would recommend. They are staged affairs at a boma established for this purpose. It was almost as bad as the touts in Egypt. Email Sakina at Sunny Safaris and ask her to put a draft itinerary together based on your post and you can fine tune it as you do more research. I was very happy with them and will use them again. Let me know if you want anymore info.
Cheers
Peter

Davidh5466

Thanks alot Peter...my wife actually e-mailed Sunny yesterday based upon some of the posts we read...where did you stay at the Ngorongoro Crater...we wanted to stay at the Crater lodge, but think it is putting us over budget.
Dave

stakerk

I would suggest you contact African Serendipity. Sandy should be able to help you plan a good objective, unbiased itinerary. Roys and Good Earth have also gotten good reviews here but will tend to favor certain properties.

Good luck

Kevin from California

Bobcaat

We booked with Good Earth Tours for a Sept safari. We gave them our itinerary and they filled it. They did not try to steer us to specific properties; but maybe we already requested their preferred properities.

MyDogKyle

You might want to also contact Mirjam at Green Footprint Adventures for her suggestions. Although I haven't taken my trip yet, I can recommend them very highly in the itinerary planning stage. They've put together a fantastic 10-day itinerary for us based on our interests (which sound similar to yours) -- in addition to game drives, we're including canoeing, hiking, a walking safari, a village visit, a visit to the Rift Valley Children's Village (orphanage), a bush dinner and night drive, and then a few days on the beach in Zanzibar. They were extremely flexible about accomodation options and helped us balance out a few splurges (Oliver's in Tarangire for my husband's birthday) with some less expensive lodging elsewhere.