I would like to visit Africa, mostly for wildlife viewing. I am considering Kenya, Tanzania, South Africa or Botswana. If you have visited any of these places, what are your impressions? If you have visited multiple sites, which do you consider to be the best? Do you have particular recommendations as to which tour companies to use?
Thanks.
I’ve been to Kruger NP numerous times. Nowhere beats it for wildlife. The rest camp accommodation inside the park is basic, like a fairly cheap U.S. motel, but it’s inexpensive at around $100 per night. But it’s all you need, since you will be out all day anywy. And the wildlife is exactly the same as the satellite private luxury game reserves that charge $3000 per night (that is correct number of zeroes). Private places like Londolozi are beautiful, but you can literally spend a month in the public park for the price of one night there.
The unique thing about Kruger is that you can rent a car and drive yourself around. They do have guided drives out of the rest camps too, and you will probably want to start out with those. Guided drives are great for getting you started on what to look for, and they will tend to focus on the “high value” animals - the Big 5. But after a while it’s great to be able to just do your own thing, stop where you want for as long as you want. Self-drive is far better if you want to take photographs, if you want to just hang out in one spot and watch things develop, or if you’re interested in birds.
So for Kruger you don’t need a tour company. Fly into JNB, rent a car, Kruger is a 5 hour drive. S.A. has first world infrastructure, and everywhere tourist-oriented is safe.
You can book all the rest camps here:
https://www.sanparks.org/bookings/
Bookings open 11 months ahead. You can pretty much always get something at shorter notice, but the best camps & best bungalows get booked out early. I can give you a lot more information about the best places to book if you decide to go for Kruger.
Best times of year:
End of dry season Aug, Sep - the vegetation has died off so visibility is good, and animals are gathered around the remaining water sources and easy to find. This is generally consider the best time, especially if you only have a few days and want guaranteed instant sightings of the big predators.
I loke Nov, Dec - early summer, the impala etc. have babies, and all the migrant birds arrive. You will still see all the big predators, it just may take a little more patience than in dry season - you can’t just drive up to a waterhole for a guaranteed sighting. If you can go for several weeks, this is the best time.
I’ve never been on a safari but I’ve seen a zillion wildlife videos on YouTube, so I’m that type of “expert” :). For me, if there’s one thing I would make a priority of in that situation, it’s watching the Great Migration, and in particular, seeing the massive herds crossing the Mara River. One of the magnificent Wonders of the World, IMO.
But I don’t know anything about the practical aspects of this.
Sorry, that’s the wrong link. Should be: Serengeti - Wikipedia
My apologies. 
I did Uganda, Kenya, and Tanzania in 2016. The only reason I included Uganda was because it happened to be part of the tour I booked, but I am glad I did. While Uganda doesn’t have the “Big 5”, they do have gorillas and chimpanzees, which are just as amazing to see in the wild. The tour I did included “gorilla tracking” Bwindi National Park, where you and a guide head into the wilderness to follow a group of gorillas that have been tagged with radio collars. It was a bit strenuous, but worth it.
Serengeti National Park is probably the most famous park in Africa, and it is definitely worth seeing. Throughout the trip I kept having to remind myself that I wasn’t watching some nature documentary on TV; I was actually there seeing it in real life.
The funny thing was the first day in Serengeti we wanted to stop and photograph pretty much every animal we saw – giraffes, gazelles, etc. After about a day we began to realize how common they were, and then we were like “meh, just more giraffes.” At that point the “Big 5” were pretty much the ones we wanted to see anyway.
I used a company called G Adventures. I think they are great, but I should mention they are a more budget oriented tour company. Depending on what “style” of tour you book you might be expected to help with the cooking on the nights you’re camping, put up your own tent, and that sort of the thing. That said their National Geographic branded tours seem to be more inclusive and come with upgraded accommodations, so you might look into those if you want something a little nicer.
G Adventures is a solid, reputable tour company. If you’re looking to do safari on a reasonably low budget, I would start there.
I used to be in the travel business, and was able to do a sponsored trip to mostly Botswana with a higher-end (and, obviously, higher priced) tour company, Wilderness Safaris. It was a life-changing experience. One of the advantages with a company like that over driving yourself around Kruger is the opportunity to go way off-road with a guide. Our first full day on the ground, we watched a cheetah and her cub take down an antelope right in front of us, all because the various guides were in communication spotting wildlife and guiding the vehicles to good observation points, and the animal encounters only got better after that. We saw multiple lions, elephants, giraffes, wild dogs, hippos, leopards…all pretty close up.
Botswana doesn’t get the massive migrations that other countries do, but my experience there was nothing short of amazing. We’re saving up now so I can take my wife there when she retires soon.
I will second the recommendations on not doing the expensive version… it was insane to be spending 1/10th as much money and seeing the exact same animals as the other groups. Sure our jeeps were the hand-me-downs, but the guides are all licensed and trained and absolutely top-notch. We safaried in Kenya, Tanzania, Zambia, and sort-of in Malawi (In that order in consecutive weeks of July). If I were to go back, I would go with Mara Explorers and Kenya and do two full weeks of their camping experience in the Mara Triangle. The animals were just more plentiful and amazing and “bigger than life”. Zambia (South Luangwa had better birding and walking safaris, but the walking safaris aren’t quite as good as we’d hoped. Not quite scripted, but very safe and not very long unfortunately.)
Tanzania is good, but not worth the additional travel needed to get there.
If we were to do anything differently, we would probably add another day or two and go see the flamingos in one of the other N.P. in Kenya. And we’d skip the Nairobi giraffes and only do the Sheldrick elephant bedtime as well as more of the museums (and other sights) in Nairobi.
But why Mara Explorers- their base camp is 5 minutes outside of the Masai Mara gate. They picked us up at our Nairobi hotel promptly (he waited for 2 hours as he was early) and even when returning us to our hotel, he guided and drove us around Nairobi for 5? hours as part of their service. He then arranged our airport cab with this friend for the next day. But the magical part was our two nights of camping in the Mara Triangle. We slept with Lion, Hyena, hippo, bird noises, and then woke up at ~5.am and were out for a morning safari immediately and watched the Mara come alive (Hippos returngin to their pools, lions finishing their feasts- and the scavengers just moving in, leopards sleeping off their kills, elephants starting their marches to water). We then had breakfast from 9-10… and finally saw other people around 11 as it is a 2-3 hour drive in to where we were camped. Two camping nights were all that we could afford even with the lower cost Mara Explorers, but it is the African experience that we would absolutely do 100x again.
The other thing about safari that I recommend- engage your guide(s). Let them know what you want to see. They joke about Germans only caring about lions, Chinese tourists take a picture of an animal and then want to right away move on to their next animal picture… we said that we wanted to see dung beetles and monitor lizards and black mambas and also to compare droppings by ostriches, elephants, buffalo, etc. Also, were there any medicinal plants for animals and people. And our guides were phenomenal!!! they knew the most incredible information (it is part of their training and licensing) and they probably knew 10x more about north and south american mammals than any U.S. park ranger. We traded stories about Yellowstone and how they were terrified of bears as they were so big and scary, but they literally could not fathom how few bears (and bighorn, elk, etc.) there actually are. And after you do safari, you will understand why they are confused about why 1 bear will cause a mile long car traffic jam. But our guides created our trip around what we wanted to see and do- and we were the first on the road and through the gates in the morning and the last to return as we didn’t want to do the tea and biscuits picnic thing. And at camping meals, we insisted that the whole team eat with us as we wanted to learn about their lives and their children’s lives and education.
That is all to say, you will have a great time whereever you go, as long as you are inquisitive, engaging, and respectful. (Respectful in Africa is very very different though- there are definitely strong feelings for example about who eats with whom and who can be present, so ask if something would be okay.) We tipped quite well, but then also left binoculars, magnifying glasses (seeing centipede jaws in mongoose scat and bite marks from Hyena on an antelope ribs even got our guides excited), and field guides that we had brought along and were happy to leave behind.
I did a 12-day stint in Botswana, which included 5 different remote camps. It was absolutely excellent (and through a strange combination of circumstances, agreeably inexpensive as well). Our group was much more into birds than most visitors, and we were deeply impressed with our guides’ knowledge - I don’t think there was one species they didn’t know well.
I’d strongly recommend good binocs and some close attention to the birds - of which the variety in southern Africa is spectacular. To miss this would be like going to southern France and eating at McDonalds.
This may all be outdated (1976) but may still be viable options.
Four backpackers stayed near budget, with a 10-day rental of a sedan in Nairobi, where we could also rent a 4-man tent and buy shelf-life groceries. We made a circle tour of the major Tanzania parks, and saw all target animals except Cheetah. Daily fees were not yet eye-popping.
Tenting was easy at guarded (from lions) sites, some had affordabe driver’s lodgings, nice and African. Menu prices were cheap at the lodges, we spent our evenings enjoying the dessert cart.
I cannot think of a single downside to such a self-guided tour, we all loved it.
^^^^^ We had no day-guide. Each park had good descriptive manual an maps, it was easy to get around and understand the necessary how-to. Take the safety warnings seriously, we saw a leopard scare the shit out a tourist who got out of the caar for a better camera angle.
Oh yeah, when I was there just a few years ago a beer at a bar cost the equivalent of around $3. And that was the touristy bars.