Africa Series – Part 4
As you probably know by now, we spent most of the summer in East Africa! We were away for a month, with the vast majority of our time being spent on the Ultimate East Africa trip by G Adventures.
We wanted to provide a review of our trip in the hope that it helps others when choosing a similar escapade!
We’ve broken the review down into a few key areas which we thought were important.
Itinerary
In a word – fantastic. This trip really shows off the highlights of East Africa. We saw amazing wildlife on safaris in the Masaai Mara and Serengeti (amongst others), spent time with mountain gorillas in the wild, spent time on the Nile river and relaxed on the white sand beaches of Zanzibar to end the trip.
The only downsides we can think of in this itinerary are as follows:
- Travelling time. There are a lot of long travel days to get between destinations. However, this was well advertised by G Adventures and is a necessary evil in getting between areas of interest. It wasn’t really a downside for us, as we were expecting it and the group made the travel days fun.
- Because of the amount of travel, we didn’t get to spend long in each location. There was so much more we could have done, but this would have made the trip too long!
- Some of the activities were somewhat over-sold in the itinerary. For example, one of the days included a chimpanzee trek and tea plantation visit. The tea plantation visit in particular had been advertised as a separate item on the itinerary and we were all looking forward to tasting some local tea. It turned out that this was simply a walk through tea plantation field, tagged on to the end of the chimpanzee walk!!
Organisation
When you’re travelling with a group, organisation is really important. There are always going to be different types of people and it’s vital for the group dynamic that everyone pulls their weight.
CEOs
During the trip we had 3 different CEOs. This in itself is great, as you get a local expert in each area of the trip.
The actual experiences we had on the trip were incredible, but it could have been made even greater if the organisation had been better. Unfortunately, 2 of the 3 CEOs we had were not quite up to the expected standard. While some of this can be put down to the local culture (things are done very differently in Africa!!), our last CEO showed that it can be done well.
We expect the fault here lies with G Adventures in the form of a lack of training. The guides seemed somewhat haphazard in their approach to organising us as if there was no ‘company standard’ way of doing things.
Chores
The idea on a G Adventures trip is that the group are split into sub-groups to complete the chores each day (food prep, washing up, campsite tidying etc). Unfortunately, this system was somewhat of a free for all on our trip.
A list was put up in the ‘Lando’ but we were never officially told what to do, which led to the same few people doing all of the chores every day! This was a real shame and could have easily been a success with better management.
‘Responsible Travel’
G Adventures only book accommodation through companies owned by locals, so you know your money is going to the right places. They are also careful to only advise responsible extra activities.
Hidden Costs
Overall, the trip cost us almost exactly what we had predicted using the information we found online. However, there were a few areas where we were a little disappointed.
The main thing to mention here is tipping. G Adventures advertise the majority of this trip to be ‘participation camping’. This means putting your own tents up, helping cooking, washing up etc. Unfortunately, we often found there were people at the campsites who carried out these chores for us. I say unfortunately because every person who carried out a chore expected a tip! While this is probably a good thing overall (jobs for local people etc), it was an unexpected change from our budget. G Adventures could have made this clearer in the trip information.
In general, we are against the tipping culture. We believe you should just pay your staff an adequate wage to begin with. If we do choose to tip, it should be for exceptional service rather than an expectation.
Summary
Overall, we were very happy with the trip.
The only nagging doubt is that it could have been made that much better if a couple of things were done differently.
The main fault was with the organisation of our 2 main CEOs. This led to a general feeling of confusion around most group activities, and the same few people always ended up doing all of the chores.
Despite this, we would still recommend this style of travel, and G Adventures in general.
Ideally, we would prefer the ‘slow travel’ style, spending a long time in each location. Unfortunately, at this stage in our lives that is not an option. The fast paced nature of this trip was perfect for us, cramming as much into our month away as possible!
Have you been on any similar trips? How was your experience? We would love to hear if you’ve had any interesting experiences!