Guest Feedback & Independent Reviews

Dear Lauren

Everything about our South African adventure was fantastic and memorable.  Starting with our pickup and drive from the airport to Motswari, which was a fun way to start to see animals in the National Park.  The staff at Motswari were warm, full of energy, attentive, and always helpful. We loved talking with the staff as we were waiting for dinner or sitting in the open-air community room. We enjoyed spending time during our breaks overlooking the river and all the animals that came to peacefully drink at the water's edge.

The food was outstanding and plentiful.  We loved the singing and joy the staff had in presenting the meals.

The safaris were so amazing that it's hard to put into words how much we enjoyed them.  Our driver and tracker were so knowledgeable.  We saw so many animals, and even though we went on 10 safaris, every day we saw several new species of animals. 

I appreciated the fact that connectivity was limited, as it was a good way to ensure we just disengaged and enjoyed our time.

We are very appreciative of all you did to make this a once-in-a-lifetime experience for us.  Starting with your first communication, you provided outstanding service, and your follow-through was exemplary.  Your notes and communications throughout our trip preparation and during the trip made us feel confident that we were going to have a great time... and we certainly did.

I'm so glad you were able to get us into the Motswari.  We are considering returning in the next 1-2 years, and it's all because of your help and the great time we had at the Motswari.

Thank You for everything you did to make our trip so memorable.  You are our friend for life.

Hi Lauren,

From start to finish, we thought this was one of the best travel experiences we've ever had.

Appreciate that you've been exceptionally responsive and thorough with the planning. Thanks for replying quickly to every email and query, and making sure our needs were taken care of from the very first conversation until we landed back home in Singapore. I really appreciated how you've consistently checked in on our travel status and experience throughout the trip - a rare level of care compared to many agencies that go quiet after payment. Having someone so attentive behind the scenes gave us real peace of mind.

At Ivory Wilderness River Rock Lodge, the staff were incredibly friendly and hospitable. We felt genuinely looked after - even calling our safari guide back from the drive so we wouldn't miss the afternoon outing after arriving just a bit late. They also accommodated our food requests and surprised us with beautiful honeymoon decorations in our room, which was such a thoughtful touch.

Our safari guide also deserves special mention. She was kind enough to return for us, worked tirelessly to find the animals we hoped to see, and was a wealth of knowledge - easy to talk to and clearly passionate about the bush. One standout moment was her navigating through rough, thorny tracks after dark to help us catch a rare sighting of a leopard. We didn't manage to see it in the end as it was getting too dangerous, but we really appreciated her effort.

All in, the combination of meticulous planning, heartfelt service, and extraordinary guiding made this safari truly outstanding. We left with full hearts, wonderful photos, and immense gratitude for everyone who made it happen. Highly recommended. :)

Ilaria

Thanks for your email. We are now safely back from South Africa and adjusting to the cold and rain!

We continue to think that the 5-day Best of Kruger safari is the best safari we have done. We saw the Big 5 on all 3 trips, and the Magnificent 7 (with the addition of cheetah and wild dogs) on 2 of them. The guides were all excellent, seemingly always in the right place at just the right time, with Simon and Nicky in particular showing their passion for the bush and getting us in just the right place for the perfect photo.

The SAN Parks accommodation in Skukuza and Satara is perfectly adequate and suits our requirements (we don't need more than 3-star accommodation). That said, experiencing the refurbished accommodation at Skukuza on the trip with Nicky was a treat!

The Perry's Bridge Hotel was excellent, with very helpful staff and good breakfast options at Kuka Restaurant.

We found that linking 3 5-day trips worked well, giving us one night after each short trip to reset (lie in, do some washing, and rest) before embarking on the next trip. If you were ever to offer a 6-night group tour, with 3 nights in each of Skukuza and Satara, we would be interested.  

As you know, we are doing 2 more 5-day safaris in October, and are planning another trip in May next year, so we will shortly be back in touch to book some more!

Hi Lauren,

We had an amazing 5-day safari experience from start to finish. The organisation was excellent, and everything ran smoothly. We really appreciated the itinerary — staying two nights in one camp and two nights in another was perfect. It allowed us to relax, enjoy each location, and not feel rushed.

The bush walk and the night safari were definite highlights. Both were unforgettable and gave us a completely different perspective on the wildlife and surroundings.

A special thank you to our guide Rufus, who was our driver, guide, and cook. He truly went above and beyond. He has excellent people skills, is very patient, and extremely well organised. He made us feel comfortable at all times and ensured everything was taken care of. His knowledge and positive attitude made the trip even more special.

Overall, this safari exceeded our expectations. Highly recommended.

Thank you for the amazing experience.

Dearest Clare

Our stay at Thabamati at the beginning of December last year was exceptional! I could not have asked for better hospitality. The lodge, the private experience, with only the four luxury tents and a few guests, was everything I could wish for my 60th. Thank you for suggesting it to us and making all the arrangements to ensure a glitch-free trip.

We saw beautiful wildlife, both on our game drives and from the deck at the lodge, and have never seen the Kruger region as green as during our visit! It was a truly unforgettable experience.

Unfortunately, Barnie became very ill on the second day of our stay. Our hosts were very compassionate and did everything they could to make him as comfortable as possible. Even the transfer company were champions. We were taken to the Hoedspruit Mediclinic instead of the airport, and overnight accommodation and additional transfers to the airport the following day were arranged. Everyone was extremely helpful and caring.

Thanks again for helping us find this beautiful place and making our stay such a special experience in spite of a few humps in the road.

Hi Ilaria,

Yes, everything went well and it was a nice trip! For sure, if someone asks me recommendations regarding safaris, I will tell them about Wild Wings Safaris. The whole safari was very well arranged. Very nice and clean accommodations, shuttles services were always within the scheduled times, the way the game drives were planned were perfect to have increased chances of spotting even the rarest animals and our guide was very good too. I think his written name should be something like Rufus... I could see that he was always very committed in giving us the best experience possible. He was always in good mood, interacting with the whole group and it was clearly noticeable that he has a lot of experience and knowledge with game drives, the life of the savannah and everything related to it. He enjoys his work and that made a better experience. In sum, all the people somehow included in the safari were nice, as well as generally in South Africa. Of course, all your planning, support and prompt availability to help me and make sure I had the best trip possible was also obvious. Thank you for all your care and kindness!  Wish you all the best!

Hi Clare,

Thank you so much for helping us plan a trip of a lifetime!! Every aspect of this trip was extraordinary!!! The details were impeccable!!

Each driver we had was so kind and helpful. Our driver, Ryan, who picked us up and drove us on our wine tour, was friendly, engaging and an excellent driver. We thoroughly enjoyed our day with him!

Ohhhh, and Arathusa ❤️❤️❤️ was a beautiful lodge, we did get a water-facing suite which we were very excited about, excellent service, friendly staff, great food and entertainment. Our guide, Debeer, and tracker, Ishmael, were just the best, very knowledgeable and fun! We saw The Big 5 and soooo much more, including a honey badger and a pack of African Wild Dog puppies!! I had an awesome massage with Winnie; she is a gem of a person, and we loved hearing story time from sweet Ronnie, who was very attentive to our needs at every meal. The first day we arrived a bit late for our safari drive, but Amen had made us some delicious sandwiches and brought them to our room with two bottles of wine; we really appreciated his kindness. One morning after our game drive, the staff had a beautiful breakfast set up out in an opening in the bush. It was beautiful to ride up to this incredible site! So very special! We just can't say enough great things about Arathusa!

The Commodore Hotel was charming; we really enjoyed the view and location. Staff were friendly and the breakfast was always good! It was a good hotel choice for us! We booked a couple of tours on our own through Viator, which worked out very nicely.

Thank you again, Clare, for planning this awesome trip for us! We highly recommend you and Wild Wings Safaris! Excellent job!

Hi Lauren

I just wanted to say thank you for everything. You were great at organising the Safari that went without a hitch. We had an amazing time. Nicky is amazing as a safari guide and looked after us from start to finish with such enthusiasm, and her knowledge is huge. We had all sorts of exciting sightings, seeing pretty much everything, thanks to Nicky's knowledge and determination. It was also lovely having traditional local food cooked by Riana.

I have put a review on TripAdvisor as I would recommend it to anyone thinking of a Safari.

Hello Lauren,

We are done with Kruger and on our way back to the airport. We had an amazing time with Nicky. She is amazing and really enjoyed her depth of knowledge about the animals and the birds and also the food that she cooked. So glad we chose Wild Wings Safaris for this tour. Thank you for your help.

Hi Clare,

I'm home and settling back into my routine. Thank you for your email and for orchestrating this fantastic trip. I had an amazing time, and it wouldn't have been possible without you and your team.

Caz made Cape Town a dream come true. She was knowledgeable, friendly, hilarious, and prompt. She was attentive and listened to my wants and needs, and then made sure they were fulfilled. She made sure I got to see all the things I wanted to and taught me so much history about the area. I will continue to recommend your team (especially Caz) to anyone looking to visit the area. I also plan to use you all for my next African adventure.

Although quirky at times, Simon was a great host, guide, and chef. He, too, was knowledgeable and skilled in his profession. Because of his skills, we were able to see all the animals we set out to see. I still don't understand how he has time to sleep because he is always catering to his guests.

I really don't have any complaints other than having warmer weather during morning game drives. However, you and the team gave fair warning about the temperatures, so thank you for that.

Again, I'll never forget this trip and look forward to working with you in the future.

Hi Clare

Our Botswana trip was more than we dreamed of!! It was exceptional, so much so that when Michael, Gavin's eldest son, gets married, we will include a trip to Namibia and other parts of Botswana that we didn't get to.

Clare, you did a fabulous job of organising our itinerary together with Desert and Delta. It was a great mix of land safari, water safari (including the walking safari) and the safari in the semi-desert, including the night out on the salt pan, which was unbelievable!

Of course, we met many other safari travellers and shared our stories. A number of them had been to Savuti and raved about the different and amount of game they saw and the kills. It seems a popular game lodge, so maybe it was fully booked by the time we contacted you to arrange our trip, or Savuti may not have fitted in with our itinerary. We will definitely visit it on our next trip.

The morning we arrived at Leroo La Tau, we were the only guests there, with a few guests arriving later that day. It was weird having lunch by ourselves (maybe our guide Ollie joined us, I can't remember), and, of course, there was very little atmosphere at that point. However, that changed in the evening when there were 8 of us. Our room (no. 10) overlooked the waterhole, but the water stopped outside room no. 8. We did ask if we could move rooms. They could only offer us room no. 6 for our 3rd night. As that first day progressed, we realised room 10 was not so bad as the elephants came to that end of the waterhole to enjoy the mud and sand bath, so we decided we would stay. We believe it was a good decision.

Baba, our guide at Camp Moremi, was incredible!! The staff at the other lodges knew him 😊. He was a guide to 6 of us, and within the first hour or so, he worked us all out pretty quickly, so much so that he allowed an older elephant to come right up to our jeep and let its trunk have a good sniff around and sniff certain people, including Franco, without any of us freaking out! He also knew how to read the other animals very well and knew when it was time to get out of the way of a trumpeting elephant mum with her baby! He had a great sense of humour too.

Joe, our guide at Xugana, was very good too, as was Ollie at Leroo La Tau.

The sleep-out at the salt pan, as we said, was an amazing experience. We are so pleased we did it. It is certainly worth the 4-hour trip both ways. We felt very honoured that the team who set up for our night – Reuben and Monare went to so much trouble to make our stay unforgettable. They cooked us a delicious dinner and breakfast, and we enjoyed chatting with them and Ollie around the campfire before retiring to our "bedroom😊" for the night. We were very warm under the stars and had a fantastic night's sleep. Ollie was very good at making conversation with us as we spent a lot of time with him over the 3 days, and we were his only guests except for the last game drive after we arrived back from the salt pan. We realised the guides need to know a lot of information regarding the politics of Botswana, the different stars in the galaxy, the different game, the bush, etc.

The agent from Desert and Delta who met us when we arrived and left Maun Airport was terrific too. I think her name is Promise or Precious. She had our soft bags and showed us where to pack them, and on our return, she had the map for us.

We were fortunate to meet Ernest (Erny), the assistant manager of Desert and Delta. He was on our flight from Maun to Moremi, which was great as he made decisions for the 6 of us on our flight to go to a restaurant outside the airport to have drinks and food (although the food arrived too late) after our flight was aborted on the runway as the brakes had failed. It didn't take too long to get another plane and pilot before we were in the air on our way to Moremi. The delay meant we didn't have time for the afternoon game drive, but we managed to see some game between the airstrip and Camp Moremi. Erny was working with the staff at Camp Moremi the whole time we were there, and then we "bumped" into him when he was visiting his in-laws at the village outside Leroo La Tau, which I am sure was arranged!! Erny was a great guy, and we enjoyed our conversations with him too.

I think we stayed the right number of days at each lodge. 3 nights at Leroo La Tau we feel would have been too long if we hadn't visited the salt pan.

Gosh, there is a lot in our email here, Clare, but I hope it is beneficial to you, your team and future guests.

Thanks again for arranging the fruit basket and wine at Camp Moremi and Xugana – that was very special.

An unforgettable experience from start to finish! The lodge, the guides - Simon, Rufus, and Manuel - and the attention to detail were exceptional. We made incredible memories, and the whole team felt truly looked after. Wild Wings Safaris were amazing and super helpful throughout the whole process! We'd recommend them to everyone and can't wait to do it again.