vacdrmr

Has anyone used Brendan vacations or Goway for their East African Safari? If so, what did and what did you not like about them.
Any recommendations for other outstanding US tour companies for Tanzania?

stakerk

African Serendipity is great for a U.S. operator. Roy's is local but well spoken of generally here.

africatravel

We had used Globus for other parts of the country. But, in Africa, I would highly recommend a private safari. We used Leopard tours (http://www.leopard-tours.com/) and were very pleased.
Our tour guide use to work for A&K tours and said that most American tour companies give the safari contract to the local tour agencies anyway. So if you work with them directly, you get a better price.
We did Kenya and Tanzania in July and used Leopard Tours for the Tanzania sector. They are great.
Ask for Deo Garcia for your tour guide. It was just him and my husband and I for the safari and it was unforgetable.

Also, a US tour company will have about 40 or so people in for one tour. We saw some tour companies who had put about 8 or so people in a single Land Rover and had a caravan of 3-4 Land Rovers going around on safari and we were so glad that it was just the 3 of us our Land Rover. We would talk to some people from other tours the night before and tell our tour guide to take us to certain places where people had seen a lot of animal activity. We even asked our tour guide to take us to see the migration area and totally customized the whole tour for us on a day to day basis. You cannot do that in a regular tour. Also, you need all the room you can get in a Land Rover to get a 360 degree view of the safari. With too many people, you may miss out on a lot of sightings, in terms of the best view.

Try Leopard Tours, we are really glad we did.
For Kenya, we used Eastern and Southern Safaris.

ann_nyc

It is not always true that a US operator will have 40 people on a trip -- it depends on the operator.
OAT, for example, has a maximum of 13 people in their kenya/tanzania trip. They use 2 stretch land rovers, so each person gets a window seat. It's not as convenient as being by yourself with only 3 people in one vehicle, but it is a far cry from 40 people!

cybor

Also many US co. offer private tours as well.
Try African Serendipity or Thompsons - haven't used but has good reviews here.
Would also rec. Tanzanian Photographic safari based in Arusha - I have used them.

atravelynn

Who puts 40 people on a safari? I'd really like to know.

Patty

Are you looking for an operator that will arrange a private safari? I ask because the itinerary that you posted on your other thread has 5 nights in the Serengeti split in two different locations. It's very rare to find a group itinerary spending that amount of time in the Serengeti, so you would more than likely have to book a custom itinerary. I could be wrong, but I didn't think that either Brendan or Goway offered custom, private tours.

Lynn,
I can't remember which operator's site it was on, but I recall seeing a particular group departure listed as "limited" to 60 participants!

bat

Other U.S. based companies for TZ (some of these book only individual groups I believe) are:

Deeper Africa
Africa Adventure
Africa Dream Safari
Uncharted Outposts

Bill_H

Lynn,
I can't remember which operator's site it was on, but I recall seeing a particular group departure listed as "limited" to 60 participants!

But they had six jeeps, so it wasn't THAT bad

atravelynn

A posse of 60 might even be an advantage if all vehicles are in contact. More eyes. Not that I'm signing up for a 60+ departure soon.

nevermind

We booked through Intrav and were 100% delighted with our trip. They used Leopard Tours. We had a small group, with two vehicles. There were 4 of us in ours.

vacdrmr

I had heard that you could arrange a private custom Safari through Brendan. I haven't confirmed it. Just checking to see if anyone had any experience with them.
We are in the process of planning our trip and if everything goes fine we will be using a local operator.
Thanks