Although we are on the move and out with our safari cars and guides throughout the year, we have more specialized recon trips several times per year.
On these trips, we always bring a mixed team to evaluate certain areas more in debth. Normally we bring team members from the operations team (like booking & planning), our most experienced guides from the specific areas we go to, as well as our safari planner experts. Together they evaluate specific circuits within a wildlife area, ideal trip combinations with the area we visit, and the most sensible routes to take.
Mapping every detail, driving distances, road conditions and marking down special places to make stops and resting places.
In this way, our clients are able to choose lodges and camps from our recommendations that is perfect for their expectations and budget. With this in mind, it’s vital that we do comprehensive mapping of the areas and anything it boarders to. Because although two itineraries could include identical wildlife areas -the actual content, driving routes, resting places and special stops, could be completely different! All this, because of the different location of the camps & lodges we recommend.
And all these factors and elements mentioned above will be different from season to season and month to month, based on the weather conditions.
So, just because we have visited a place at a certain time of the year, it does not mean that we know anything about that area during other times of the year. You would be surprised how much an area can change from one month to another -it could be a completely different scenery, as will the animal sightings and their behaviour. And last but not least; how many tourists there are! This is also an element in constant change, based on trends and promotion.
Imagine a big country like Tanzania that has dedicated more that 25% of it’s total landmass to protected areas, how much work it takes to map every single area at any time of the year to provide as accurate information to our travelers as possible.
And then, when you think you have gotten it all figured out, climate change comes and gives it all a push, so that things change completely. Then we have to do it all over again. So this is truly a never ending story for us -but we LOVE it!
And this is also how we recruit our safari agents and safari planners. Almost all of them have started out as normal travelers buying a trip, and then figured out that they can’t get enough of the Tanzanian wildlife. This is also a security for our travelers, because you know that you will receive a passionate safari planner/agent that will create your trip, with a background as a traveler themselves.
For all our safari planners, it is a requirement that they have actually been to the areas they include into an itinerary. So our planners and agents can not sell an area they have not been to themselves.
—And that is the most important travel insurance you have when you travel with us.
Passion - Knowledge - Experience