Feeling deceived
Services contracted: Fully customized private safaris, 4 DAYS AMBOSELI, TSAVO WEST & EAST and 9 DAYS SAMBURU, BUFFALO SPRINGS, ABERDARE, LAKE NAIVASHA, LAKE NAKURU, HELL'S GATE & MASAI MARA.
First of all, I want to put on record the positive aspects:
- Smooth communication with quick responses from Stephen during pre-hire planning.
- Willingness to adapt the tours and accommodations to our requirements.
- Experienced and qualified drivers.
I am writing this review 5 months after the safari because in those months Stephen from Pride of Africa assured me that he was looking into ways to compensate for the problems I describe below.
- Problems with payments. I paid a deposit by wire transfer to secure the booking. The balance was to be paid upon arrival in Nairobi in USD, but most of the banknotes I had with me were refused. They said they would only accept freshly printed notes, even though the older notes I had were perfectly legal. They also refused to accept payment by credit card or wire transfer. We spent hours at the ATMs until we had reached the maximum on my cards. The driver offered to make up the difference in cash and accept the payment via bank transfer later.
- Non-compliance with the programme. The visit to Samburu Park was cancelled, thus saving the entrance fees, but we have not been refunded. The safari in Aberdare Park was limited to 1 hour in the cafeteria of the Ark Tree Lodge, despite the fact that we had indicated from the beginning that we were not interested in visiting the lodge but wanted to do some of the trekking to the numerous waterfalls in the park. At Lake Naivasha the tickets for the boat trip and visit of the island turned out not to be included despite both activities being included in the programme (the justification was that the programme included the entrance fees to the parks, but that Lake Naivasha was not a ‘park’ (??).
- Non-compliance with the Masai Mara programme. It included 4 game drives in the park: the first in the afternoon on day one after the scheduled lunch at the lodge where we were to arrive at noon, 2 full-day safaris and the last one in the morning before the scheduled departure for Nairobi at noon. However, the driver delayed leaving the previous park (Lake Nakuru) and made several stops along the way, meaning we arrived too late for the first safari. On the last day, the safari was reduced to a drive between the entrance gate near our lodge and the exit gate closest to the road to Nairobi, in a manoeuvre by the driver to save on entrance fees by justifying at the checkpoints that we had only crossed the park on our way from the lodge (we even went through the checkpoints with the roof closed so as not to look like we were coming from a game drive). We reported these irregularities to Stephen before we left Kenya and asked for a refund of the unpaid entrance fees, but since then he has only postponed the resolution (claiming that he had to complain to the driver) and has avoided refunding the money to date.
