Travelling with tour companies in Africa

Posted on 8 February 2011

I often travel alone and just about always have travelled with tour companies. I know that to some people, this seems like the most awful thing one could do … all they wanna do is arrive in a country and figure it out from there. I can’t do that. I think I would actually be physically incapable of it and it would ruin my holiday.

For me, a holiday is not having to worry about anything but the fun stuff. When I travel, it is a weight off my shoulders to know that my transport and my accommodation has already been handled. And when I travel to places, I want to never need to go back there, because there are far too many other places on my Life List to get to. So, that is the other reason I like to go with tour companies, generally they know the place you’re travelling too and have researched it and will cover the most likely and best bits.

So, when I travel, that is generally how I pick which tour company to use. For me it comes down to (a) which trip covers the majority (or more) of what I know my minimum experience requirements of a place are and (b) which tour company offers the trip with the most suitable departure date (because, let’s be honest, most tour companies offer almost identical or very similar tours anyway).

So, who have I travelled with? A fair question, but I doubt you can go wrong with one of the big companies regardless, so don’t worry too much.
For my 5 week Southern Africa overland trip in 2004, I travelled with a smaller company called Wagon Trails (who I think has since been bought out by one of the other tour companies). This experience had it’s ups and downs. The route covered everything I wanted to do, as well as the optional extras I was most interested in, and the tour was within my budget. Something that was both a plus and a minus was that we travelled in a very ordinary minibus, instead of one of those fancy overlander vehicles that are more common today. We were a small enough group that it didn’t make a difference and I thoroughly enjoyed it. The thing about doing such a long trip is that it’s often smaller trips joined together. We had 2 different tour leaders and had people leaving and joining our tour regularly. I think there were only 3 of us who spent the full 5 weeks together.

For my trip to Egypt in 2006 I used On The Go. This wasn’t really a choice for me as friends had booked their trip and my boyfriend at the time and I tagged along. It was a very hand-held, we go here, then we go there all as a tour group kind of trip. Which I thought I’d hate, but to be honest, in some countries that is just what you need. And it was absolutely perfect for Egypt. I have always been fascinated by Egypt and I can’t imagine travelling around it without a proper guide (aparently all Egyptian tour guides have to have done a 3 year Egyptology degree). Someone who can decipher hieroglyphics and who knows where all the things that are cooler than the Pyramids are (because just about everything else you see in Egypt is actually more interesting than the Pyramids!) is a giant plus on a trip. Abu Simbel was an optional extra we almost didn’t do. And it turned out to be (although the closest to heat stroke I’ve probably ever come) one of the highlights of our trip and one of the most spectacular things to see in Egypt.

For my trip to East Africa in 2007, I used Go2Africa, which was actually just an agent for The African Travel Co. So finally I got to go overlanding in Africa in one of those giant overland trucks. It was better for game viewing by far (being so much higher up), but we had some serious stuck-in-the-mud experiences on the trip. I was quite happy with this trip but I know there were quite a few people I travelled with that were not very happy with the way some things were handled. I did a Masai Mara add-on. Which I wouldn’t recommend. Initially I was told that it basically meant I could travel down to the Masai Mara a few days earlier with another group and then would just join my group when they arrived there. But it turned out not to be the case. And the road from Nairobi to the Masai Mara is the only time I’ve ever needed to take motion sickness tablets for driving! But, I was lucky (I think). They’d booked so many people onto the trip (because everyone wants to go in August for the Wildebeest migration) so there were 2 tour groups doing the same tour, so one of the groups (mine) did the route backwards. Which meant instead of starting in the Masai Mara, we ended there, which was ideal for me as I’d just spent a few days there.

Other people on the trip got frustrated with the vast distances one has to cover when overlanding in Africa, but I was quite familiar with it from my 2005 trip. Plus, I knew what I was there to see and really, anything else was just icing for me. Somehow it’s far easier to just accept plans changing while I’m on holiday than in real life, and again, this is a large part of why I travel with tour companies. Because they have to spend their days on the phone re-arranging plans when things do go wrong, and I can just sit back and enjoy the view.

For my week in Zanzibar in 2009, I didn’t use a tour company. But I did book through an agent who handled everything from transport to accommodation. Barefoot Breaks was absolutely fantastic. From giving me around 12 trip variations to choose from, after me trying to explain that I couldn’t quite imagine spending 7 solid days on a beach or in a cliché resort. And they got it spot on. I’d definitely recommend their services to anyone.






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