Travel reviews

Travel reviews by Mrs. L from Surrey

Overall Trip Experience

On this trip, I visited Zambia between 4-Sep-2011 and 15-Sep-2011 and I travelled with 3 other people.

Overall my trip experience was:


Very disappointed about the walking safari experience and because there was so little interaction with animals the walking safari part was repetitive and after a few days boring. As the camps were relatively close to each other the terrains were very similar and therefore again led to repetition about the trees, grasses and poo.

The pictures in the Norman Carr brochures have obviously been manipulated (we heard that one of the hosts had admitted this to fellow travellers), very misleading. Had we known that the animals ran away we would not have taken this holiday. A very expensive mistake.

Because of the repetition we also thought that the trip was too long. 5 nights would have been more than enough before moving to a new location altogether.

A herd of buffalo bolted when we were 200 metres away. Hippos and crocodiles ran into the water when we were walking on the river banks on the opposite side to the sand spits they were on 40-50 metres away. A lion even moved into the grass when we were over 250 metres away. Lions, Hippos and crocodiles do not move away from vehicles even when they are relatively close.

We saw lots of game on the drives and were lucky to see 5 leopard and a significant number of lions including a mating pair during the trip.

There were some issues of cleanliness at the camps with broken or chipped toilet seats and general dirtiness of room floors and at Kakuli the bar area. We do not mean daily dust. Mrs Lloyd has lived in Zambia and understands the local situation regarding cleaning. The expat staff should be more on top of general cleaning.

Suggestions to help us improve our trips or our service:

We have no issue with Expert Africa's service.

For walking safaris I would suggest that you ask people what they think they will experience. The novelty of the walking safari experience is short lived and therefore we recommend that 4-5 days on the Norman Carr safari is more than enough. Our 9 night holiday was far too long.

Feedback response

Expert Africa was sorry to hear that walking safaris in South Luangwa did not meet the expectations these travellers had of what walking through a wildlife area would be like.

At Expert Africa we try hard to use our expertise to guide our travellers using unbiased advice rather than a 'sales pitch'. The flip side of this is that when travellers appear to have done their research and selected what they feel will suit them, we may not question these choices to avoid seeming to 'push' an alternative option.

This feedback has highlighted to us that we should always take the time to double check that our travellers choices are indeed the right ones for them. In that way, we can use our personal experience of the safari camps, areas and activities to ensure that our travellers have correctly interpreted any other literature and resources they've read where only the best room images and/or most exciting wildlife scenarios have been shown.

Had we done that with these travellers, they may have altered their choices and ended up with a holiday itinerary that suited them much better.

I stayed at and have reviewed:

Place Overall rating
Luwi Bushcamp, Zambia
5-Sep-2011 review: Luwi Bushcamp review
Nsolo Bushcamp, Zambia
7-Sep-2011 review: Nsolo Bushcamp review
Mchenja Bushcamp, Zambia
9-Sep-2011 review: Mchenja Bushcamp review
Kakuli Bushcamp, Zambia
11-Sep-2011 review: Kakuli Bushcamp review
Kapani Lodge, Zambia
13-Sep-2011 review: Kapani Lodge review
Taj Pamodzi Hotel, Zambia
14-Sep-2011 review: Taj Pamodzi Hotel review