Tribes Travel

Contact us on 01728 685 971 or by e-mail at amanda@tribes.co.uk or by post at

Tribes Travel, 12 The Business Centre, Earl Soham, Woodbridge, Suffolk, IP13 7SA, UK

Tribes Travel

The art of travelling with respect

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    Review

     

    1. BB
    2. 20/10/2010
    3. 2
    4. South Africa

    5. Overall level of satisfaction

      • Excellent

      Excellent

    7. South Africa is an amazing country, with stunning scenery ranging from verdant orcahrds in Western Cape to the arid Karoo desert. Even Karoo was fascinating because of the shapes of the surrounding mountains and the contorted rock strata. We fell in love with game driving; it sounds ridiculous but there is so much wildlife to see because it's so big and therefore very visible. We were very lucky to see a pack of wild dogs but the very fact we could get so close to leopards, lions, elephants, baby hyenas through the skill of the rangers was quite stunning. On a self-drive game drive we saw 2 tortoises having a territorial dispute, apart from elepahnts galore and kudu, kudu and more kudu . . . We ended up whale watching at Gansbaii - no effort required, simply sit and wait on the deck at the front of Whalesong Lodge and the whales will cruise by.
      We also did scenery (Blyde River Canyon, magnificent even in the slight mist, Tsitsikama National Park, several passes in Western Cape), and architecture (Graff Reinett, one of the best examples of a Dutch colonial town).
      Are we going again - you bet!

    8. Tribes service

      • Excellent

      Excellent

    10. Throughout the trip we said "Thank you, Tracy, you got it right again." Tracy, our consultant, took infinite trouble to get to know us, our interests and what we wanted to get out of this special trip to celebrate our 60th birthdays. Throughout the planning stage, even when we were talking to more than one agent, she was always there for us with ideas, alternatives and just advice. She happily incorporated parts of the trip we ourselves specified; came up with brilliant ways structuring the itinerary without exhausting ourselves; and dealt with a last-minute crisis without batting an eye-lid - and at no extra cost!
      From a wider perspective, even when Tracy was not herself there, someone else in the Tribes office very capably dealt with queries.

    11. Expectations

      • Excellent

      Excellent

    13. We put a lot of effort into planning our trip before we even spoke to an agent. We learnt a lot in talking to Tracy before we finally approved the itinerary. We thought we knew what we were going to experience - in practice, our constant word was "Wow!" Virtually everything was better than we expected, so "us".

    14. Guides

      • Excellent

      Excellent

    17. Social & Environmental Responsibility

      • Good

      Good

    19. All but one of the places suggested by Tribes were aware of these issues; we ourselves specified two places and of those one was in a very touristy location (although it employed a higher proportion of African staff in more senior positions than elsewhere).

    20. Other comments

    21. Whale-watching is the most incredible experience. Tracy's strong recommendation of Whalesong Lodge at Gansbaii was spot-on (see earlier comments). We set off 3 times for a longish walk along the coast path and never got further than about 500m because there were whales to watch - mums and calves, solitaries, whales standing on their noses waving their tails in the air, whales wallowing on their backs and flapping their flippers, whales blowing. Mostly we just sat on the deck of Whalesong Lodge, drinking the complimentary tea or coffee and just watching these totally engrossing animals.
      I should add that the welcome from Stanley and Lainey was second to none, and their cooking is superb.

    1. Experiences

    1. Cape Town

    2. Cape Town
      • It was OK

      It was OK

    4. We found the centre of Cape Town just like any other city with a few interesting buildings. I get bad vertigo so going up Table Mountain was never an option, and it was in any case closed the day we were there. We had spent the previous 3 weeks doing grand scenery, had seen penguins at Betty's Bay so had no need of the Cape Peninsula. Another time we wouls go direct to the airport from Gansbaii, possibly via Stellenbosch.

    1. On Safari in Kruger

    2. On Safari in Kruger
      • Don't even think about missing this!

      Don't even think about missing this!

    4. Game driving in Sabi Sand is an experience not to be missed. The limit of 3 vehicles per sighting means that everyone gets a good experience of even the rarest sights, and you may be lucky, as we were, to have a leopard to yourselves for well over half an hour. The guides are friendly, knowledgeable and determined to give their customers the best experience possible. Elephant Plains Game Lodge is small, so the service is personal, and the food is excellent. We arrived after the afternoon game drive had left; a jeep met us at the airstrip and took an hour and a half to get us to the Lodge. The next day we realised we had had a private little game drive, the actual crow's-flight distance could be covered in 5 minutes! The chef also accommodated my upset tummy without any difficulties.

    1. Self-driving in South Africa

      • Don't even think about missing this!

      Don't even think about missing this!

    4. The great advantage of self-drive is that you can go what route you want, when you want, stopping where you like. We prefer to be fancy free doing what we feel like as the mood takes us (within the confines of the itinerary), so self-drive is the thing for us. The roads (apart from Cape Town!) are amazing, wide and empty, with a hard shoulder which you pull onto to let people past. There are frequent pull-ins, many shaded, so you can stop for a break with ease. Signage could be bettter, it's a bit like France, the signs tell you the place the road is going to eventually, often missing out the intermediate place you actually want, but apart from that self-drive is easy-peasy. We were given a road atlas and suggested routes in our welcome pack and that was all we needed.
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