I am looking for a tour company that will offer safety first and a good overall adventure of the cities and safaris. Abercrombie and Tauck are out of our price range. Is there a recommended company to contact?

Try an in-country SA tour operator as:

go2africa
Plus Africa

in the States consider:

Eyes on Africa (Chicago)
Fish Eagles (Texas)
Africa Travel Co (Calif)

All are reputable and will depend on when you're traveling, how long, where visiting, type of accommodations. They should be able to meet your budget, but they're not inexpensive. They will arrange private itineraries and everything from meet/greet on arrival, transfers from one place to another, accommodations, tours/sightseeing and to the airport for return.

If looking for a group tour, check out www.2afrika.com (located in NYC), with set departures, places visited and accommodations of their choice.

When we did our trip to Africa we contacted several companies and ended up going with go2africa. We dealt with Rikke Williams who was fabulous, but I have also heard good things about the other agents that work there. She even rearranged some things for us when we got there (Our shark trip had been cancelled due to weather and I called her on her cell while she was on a picnic with her kids. She had it taken care of in 10 minutes). The trip was exactly what we wanted and she came in about $1000 less per person than the next cheapest company.

Many people have

Not sure where that last line came from ! I forgot to mention - I also contacted African Adventure and they were really easy to deal with. The reason we didn't go with them was that they tried to send me on a walking safari to save money (my parents were going with us and they are in their 70's) and they still came in more expensive than go2africa. But I have heard very good things about them from other people. And their book Africa's Top Wildlife Countries was a fabulous resource.

I'd strongly suyggest avoiding Go2Africa. They were the one disappointment in an overwise trip of a lifetime to Africa. Customer service is definitely a foreign concept to them.

I was very pleased with Southern Destinations, based in CapeTown.


www.southerndestinations.com

ForgotMyNameAgain,

Please tell us the problem with go2Africa. There have been several very positive accounts of this company.

This must be your first post with this clever new name that you will not likely forget again. Hope your password is equally unforgetable.

Go2Africa knows SA well and can build an interesting trip. From what I saw, they are not cheaper than others and more epensive than some. The issue I have with them is service. Part of our trip was not delivered, and they choose to do zero about it. I expect more than just the ability to cash my check.

That's bad, ForgotmyName. What's really bad is doing zero about it.

When we visited Namibia 3 years ago we used Go2Africa.

The trip did not started very well.We where about to take of at Frankfurt when a big bird hit one of the plane´s engine,so of course we didn´t take off.

I called Janine at Go2africa (it was 8 p.m.)to tell her we where going to arrive 12 hours later.
She called me back in no more than half an hour to tell me they will wait for us to collect our car(it was going to be 11 p.m.) and the people from the car agency will drive us to our (new)hotel in Winhoek.

The rest of the trip when perfect.

I think that was a good service,but that was our experience.

Paco.

Sorry if I am prying for gory details, ForgotMyName, but that is a serious problem if services paid for were not provided. Would you care to share more?

Is this the trip that consisted of back to back mobiles and the agent messed up the dates so that there was overlap and some days on the front end of Trip #2 were lopped off? If so, I recall that.