06/02/2024
Our recent guest Kei Yin W from California, United States wrote this review on TripAdvisor
A lifetime experience.
Jan 2024 • Family
“I am sure this will not be just a tour but a lifetime experience of Africa.” — Dennis, Kibena’s tour operator.
He was absolutely right. We totally enjoyed the tour a ton. The itinerary was well planned starting from the first airport pickup. Our group arrived in Kilimanjaro separately in two days. I appreciated that Dennis and his crew came to the airport twice to pick up all of us.
The tour started from the Tarangire National Park, where we encountered a couple of resting lions, a group of elephant, and some giraffes. In addition, a double rainbow in the late afternoon. It was a good taste of African wildlife on the first day of the trip.
The tour then continued with Lake Manyara National Park, which had the large lake on one side and rain forest on the other side. We didn’t encounter any predators and large animals here, but just some monkeys on our way out of the park.
The third day at the Ngorongoro Conservation Area, especially the Crater, was the first highlight of the trip. There were abundant of zebras, wildebeest, buffalos, flamingos, and many more. More importantly, two rhinos! Although they were super far from us, it was somehow lucky to see the rarest of the Big Five.
The excitement continued to the next 3 days, where happened in Ndutu, Southern Serengeti. It was common to see lions, cheetahs, and leopards, just to name a few. The coolest moment was to see 9 lions approaching us altogether. Some went resting on the tree, while the others were under.
A relatively unfortunate days were the 2 nights we spent in Central Serengeti. This year rained differently than usual. The grass here grew much longer and it consequently made the game drive much harder. It was difficult to spot the predators when there were lying down in the bush and grass.
The trip ended with a surprising moment to us. Now please allow me to give the biggest applause to our tour guide, Raymond (Ray). This trip wouldn’t be perfect without him. Ray was an extremely friendly, knowledgeable, responsible guide, and at the same time, a skillful and considerate driver. The main purpose of this tour was to see wildebeest migration. However, we couldn’t encounter the head of wildebeests throughout the first 7 days because of the unusual rain and weather. In the last couple of days, Ray kept asking all other tour guides to obtain the weather information of the Southern Serengeti. Based on his 17 years of experience, he predicted the location where the wildebeests would be. On the very last day of the trip, he brought us back to Southern Serengeti and seek for the head of wildebeests. We made it! Massive zebras and wildebeests covered the plain. They spread out all the way to the horizon. Ray spent extra hours to let us see what we came to Tanzania for. We truly appreciated him being such responsible to the clients.
Speaking of experience, Ray also re-arranged the order of the parks to make sure we had enough time to enjoy Serengeti. Each game drive he drove around the territory and successfully found the animals we would like to see. Furthermore, Ray was so knowledgeable that he kept providing animal/parks/ecology/cultural information and answering numerous questions from each of us.
On the last day in Arusha, Ray kindly drove us around the town and kept us company before heading to airport in the late afternoon.
At the end, we highly recommend Dennis and Kibena. He has arranged nice accommodations and trip plans. Raymond deserves countless stars if I were to rate him."
