Hi Liesl, I'm in London waiting for my flight back to the ice and snow, and I have to be honest - everywhere you booked us was absolutely beyond amazing! Plettenberg Bay (Starfish), the Garden Route farm (Malvern Manor) and especially Nottens were fantastic and great value. In 2008 my profession had a World Congress in Cape Town and I was accompanied by 12 North Americans.  The trip was great, BUT I needed to find a better travel agent. YOU GUYS  passed with flying colours! Will keep in touch, Vic  

Good morning, Yes, we are back and had a wonderful vacation!  I'll give you our honest feedback.  We just loved Kirkman's Kamp.  In truth we actually saw more animals just driving in our rental car through Kruger National Park ourselves, but the experience of the drive was awesome.  For example, we saw a leopard eating it's impala kill and had the ability to sit under it in our land rover for about 45 minutes while a hyena was nearby.  This is something we wouldn't have seen on our own car drive.  The staff there gave us first class treatment - with greeting us as we arrived and giving us fresh moist towels to clean up with.  For the game drive, we loved the touch of having hot water bottles and blankets to keep us warm! They wound up giving us two game drives (we thought there was just one evening one and a walk). The food there was excellent and the room/accommodations superb.  Everyone needs an escort to their room as animals can be everywhere.  In fact, they said the night before a lion chased an impala through their camp! Too bad we couldn't have afforded another night because we might have been able to spot the only animal of the big five we never got to see, the lion. Riley's Rock was unique.  My sister was disappointed with it initially feeling it was too 'rustic', but the rest of us really loved the look and 'feel' of it.  She wound up coming around to really loving it - who wouldn't with all the dinners under the stars around a fire? We were blessed with having our first dinner with Ted Riley himself.  Apparently he had guests that were in for some important conservation business and it allowed for some very serious and interesting dinner conversation with all of us...a great and memorable experience. Interestingly, they asked about how we booked their hotel and we told them about you (and they were quite grateful).  How had you heard about them?  We also loved the Swaziland excursions we took through Swazi-Travel. Kosi-Forest Lodge though beautiful, was probably our least favorite.   The place was truly lovely yet simplistic. We loved the look of the tiki torches around so we can find our room at night.   It would be a much better place to stay in the spring or summer as it was too cold to go snorkeling.  It was also more geared for honeymoon couples. The food was tasty and it's presentation very nice. Thula Thula was nice, though disappointing for game viewing.  If I had it to do over again, I would have stayed one day there (just because my wife read the book), and two days at a big game reserve hotel.  They don't have the big 5 there - and really the main thing to see is their signature elephants, which are breathtaking.  The tracker and driver were magnificent, but they excelled more on the bush walks.  We only got to see elephants and rhino there...they have no lions and in 3 game drives we never saw buffalo or leopard either.  In fact they hadn't seen a leopard since last December.  The tented accommodations were nicer, in our opinion, then Kosi-Forest Lodge. They were bigger.  Both had family tents, which might have been preferred for us - if less expensive.  The meals were good and we especially liked that there was a game meat option each day. We wound up downloading the South Africa map for our GPS and we are glad we did.  While it wasn't perfect, it did fill in missing spots when using the directions provided. The GPS did wind up giving us totally wrong directions to Thula Thula though. Looking back, it would have been better doing the trip in reverse...as it is hard to top seeing so many animals (Kruger and Kirkman's Kamp). Again, thank you so much for organizing the trip for us - it was really a once in a lifetime experience and our whole family has memories that won't be forgotten! P.S. - your telephone call to us at Kosi Bay was a wonderful touch and much appreciated. The Toro family

Thank you very much!

I can’t begin to explain to you how wonderful everything was. To be honest, even though I had agreed to everything, I was still a little skeptical about some of the recommendations you had made. Turns out, some of the things I had been most skeptical of (Cape Town, Victoria Falls, San Camp) were the absolute highlights. You and your team did a remarkable job and Milena and I have already begun trying to figure out a way to get back. If there is ever anything that we can do to help you all convince prospective clients that this is something that they need to do, we’d love to help.

As far as pictures go, Milena and I are far from good. However, that didn’t stop us from taking ~2,000 photos. I’ll send you an invitation to our Snapfish folder. Additionally, I’m a fan of African Safari Consultants on facebook. I’m not sure if that gives you access to my photos, but if it does, we’ve got a bunch of them posted there as well. Again, most of them are pretty bad, but if you happen to see anything that you’d like to use, they’re all yours.

If I get some time later today or over the weekend, I’ll try to put together a more thorough review of everywhere we went/stayed. Needless to say, we were impressed by everything and we only have good things to say.

Thank you all so much for everything you did.

Dear Jeffrey, Thank you,  thank you, thank you for helping me plan probably the best trip of my life.  You and Liesle helped me look like a pro in the eyes of my family! Everything went smoothly.  There are so many highlights.  I'd like to list just a few.  We all fell in love  with Charlie.  He was the perfect fit for our family.  The kids were still talking about him days later when we were on safari.   We also really enjoyed our driver/ guide at Savuti.  (Richard)  He was really informative.  We also felt very safe with him. I really felt like we were in the wilds while we were there.  We were not as enamored with our guide at Chiefs but really enjoyed the rest of the staff.  There was a couple there studying the plant life.  Since I love to garden I tagged along with them one session instead of going on a drive to see the animals. I finally swallowed my fear of Class V rapids and decided to go rafting.  It was so much fun.  The hard part was walking/crawling my way down the hill/ mountain.  I was very shaken by the time I got to the bottom.  JIm gave me about two seconds to  gather my wits and then he threw me in the raft.  Believe me when I say there's no way I would be able to hike back out.  My thighs hurt for three days.  One guide was nice enough to help me down.   Again our guide was great fun and we felt very secure with him.  The other raft lost people after the first set of rapids. There's nothing like going with  your family  and spending a great deal of time with them without the interruptions of cell phones,  TV. and computers  and discovering you still like them at the end of your trip. All kidding aside everyone had a great time.  They'll already dreaming up the next big trip. Lori

Hello Ilze, Yes, now back at work and, unfortunately, getting back into the old routine. Olympic action is certainly going better than we expected – big plus point there. The gorillas behaved impeccably. They were less than an hour away from the track start. The leader had a bit of an argument with one or two of the younger ones. Baby on mum’s back. Beating of chests. Probably most if not all of what you would want/expect to see. It took longer to find the golden monkeys but they too were good but not quite so obliging from the photography point of view. Marlin Lodge was very good, thank you. The people there – staff – were a really good crowd. The place itself was a delight. The main problem here is that all the weight we lost with gorilla and golden monkey tracking has been put back with – possibly – a vengeance! The weather was better than the week before we were there and, on the day we left, it had taken a turn for the windier and cooler – so we could not complain. I have to say, their attention to detail was excellent. Last but not least, we both enjoyed immensely both parts of the trip and thanks for your help in doing just that. I will certainly get in touch with you again should we get down into that part of the world again. Mgahinga – Bwindi Lodge – Peermont – Marlin Lodge Kind regards, Graham