Embark on an extraordinary journey with our curated nature-based African safaris, meticulously crafted with over 25 years of experience and deep local connections. We take pride in being among the world's best, recognised by Condé Nast Traveler, Travel + Leisure, and the World Travel Awards.
Whether it's your first safari or your twentieth, our Africa Safari Experts can tailor-make any vacation to make it the trip of a lifetime, everytime. From your first enquiry until you safely return home, we're by your side, handling every detail with 24/7 support.
Why Choose Us for Your African Safari?
Our deep roots in Africa mean we have invaluable expertise about every destination, every lodge, every experience, and every hidden gem we recommend. We've built trusted relationships with over 1,000 thoughtfully selected travel partners in Southern and East Africa - the best in the industry. Every partner shares our commitment to delivering exceptional experiences and sustainable operations.
Our small-group safaris and Photo Expeditions feature intimate camps and private reserves. In Africa, our focus is on secluded and spectacular wildlife encounters away from crowds. Yet despite our isolated locales, you’ll enjoy surprising luxury in the bush, with amenities and personalized service that will exceed your expectations. Our Expedition Leaders, who are among the most experienced and highly trained safari guides in Africa, are the key to your superlative adventure.
We are more than happy to work across this range of prices. The only important thing is that we help you find the very best safari to suit your budget.
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What Our Guests Say
Our guests rave about the exceptional service and attention to detail they receive. Here are a few testimonials:
- “We’ve used many different travel organizers and agents, but one truly stands like a giraffe, head and shoulders above all others.” - Linda Goddard ★ ★ ★ ★ ★
- “ATR are the experts in their field and I wouldn’t trust anyone else.” - Tara Stewart ★ ★ ★ ★ ★
- “ATR are honest in their appraisal of individual lodges. You can trust their judgement.” - Graeme Gales ★ ★ ★ ★ ★
Go2Africa’s James Steele and Maureen Omukhango, provided a level of service that totally exceeded my expectations. Everyone we worked with was responsive, helpful, knowledgeable and pleasant. Any issues we had were dealt with.
The service provided by Go2Africa was excellent! From our initial phone inquiry to the moment we landed back home, every detail was taken care of, providing us a stress free vacation. All service was wonderful. I have nothing but the highest praise. We were met at all our venues on time.
Go2africa did a wonderful job on our trip to Africa. They helped us come up with the best plan available for our budget and we felt supported by them for the entire trip. Service and providers were top quality.
The service we received from Go2Africa was excellent. Working then with Craig, he set out the steps we needed to follow to make the trip really stress free, including the timing of each step .
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Nawal Hassan planned a perfect trip for us. We were met at the Kilimanjaro airport and assisted in receiving our visas. Wonderful service from the whole team. Quick feedback, extra info whenever asked and their recommendations were all a bit hit with me and my family.
This was our second vacation with Go2Africa.
Tailored Safari Experiences
Crafting your dream safari involves careful planning, which might seem overwhelming. Rest assured, we're here to make the process effortless. With 50 years of safari expertise, we handle every detail-from flights and luxury stays to exclusive experiences-so all you have to do is enjoy the journey. When we say we know Africa, we know the details too. With an investment like a safari, travel protection is a must. African Travel provides a comprehensive travel protection plan tailored specifically for safari vacations, ensuring peace of mind throughout your journey.
Top 10 African Safari Destinations
Types of African Safari Trips
We offer a variety of safari experiences to suit every traveler's preferences:
- Honeymoon Safaris: The ultimate romantic getaway, filled with unforgettable moments.
- Family Safaris: Create lasting memories with a family adventure in the African wilderness.
- Luxury Safaris: Indulge in beautifully designed lodges, exquisite cuisine, and elegant service.
- Adventure Safaris: Experience the raw intensity of the African bush with simpler camps and close encounters with wildlife.
Top Safari Destinations
Masai Mara, Serengeti or Kruger? Arguably three of safari's heaviest hitters, each offering a truly unique experience.
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There are nine main safari countries in Africa, which vary enormously in terms of landscapes, climates, wildlife, safari styles, visitor facilities and visitor numbers. Deciding the best countries to include in your trip is a fundamentally important issue.
- Luxury: If you are looking for a luxurious high-quality bush experience, then there are options in all countries, but most notably in Botswana, Tanzania, South Africa, Zambia, Zimbabwe and Kenya.
- Earthy: For a more earthy and intimate experience, with a greater focus on high quality guiding and walking safari, there are good options in Tanzania, Zambia and Zimbabwe.
- Overland: For private-guided overland safaris, which offer a broader African experience, but which are slightly more arduous, the Serengeti region of Tanzania is the place.
- Lower cost: If you need to find the best lower cost options, then you should probably start in South Africa and Zimbabwe.
- Self-drive: For self-drive safari options, Namibia is the stand-out country, with further options in South Africa.
- Primates: If you are interested in gorillas and chimps, then you need to look at Rwanda, Uganda and Congo.
Combining Locations
Tropical beaches, rural areas, Victoria Falls and Cape Town can add variety into a trip and help to keep a lid on costs.
- Tropical beaches: If you want to include tropical beaches with your safari, the most convenient locations are Kenya, Tanzania and the Kruger area of South Africa.
- Primate areas:If you also want to go trekking in the tropical forests in search of gorillas and chimpanzees, then you need to head to Rwanda or Uganda, which combine most easily with the Serengeti region of Tanzania for savanna safari.
- Rural locations: Some safari locations are located near attractive rural areas, where stylish lodges offer a chance to relax and undertake a whole other range of more culturally-focused activities. The Serengeti region of Tanzania is particularly strong in this respect.
- Victoria Falls: The Victoria Falls are very conveniently combined with the safari areas of Botswana, Zambia, Zimbabwe. There are even direct flight connections with the Kruger area of South Africa.
- Cape Town: Cape Town, the Whale Coast and the Cape Winelands are extremely beautiful and ridiculously good value. It therefore tends to be combined with safari on the mainland in trips of three or more weeks.
When to Go on Safari
The various safari areas of Africa are not only very seasonal, but even in the same month conditions can vary enormously from place to place. Careful planning is extremely important. The high level view goes something like this …
- May-Sep: is the main dry season in most safari locations, with dry and sunny conditions, prolific wildlife viewing, high season prices and relatively high visitor traffic.
- Oct-Nov: is a transition period in most areas, with mixed weather conditions, slightly reduced wildlife sightings, reduced prices and relatively low visitor traffic.
- Dec-Jan: is usually good in most of East Africa, but hot and rainy in much of Southern Africa, with high season prices and high visitor traffic for the middle two weeks.
- Feb-Apr: is generally rainy and adverse, but with major exceptions including the migration calving season in the Serengeti area of Tanzania and great low season prices in Botswana. Visitor traffic is generally quite low.
How Long to Spend in Africa
- 8 to 14 nights: Most of our guests tend to deploy 8 to 14 nights in Africa, of which anything from 3 to 13 nights are spend actually on safari.
- 12 to 21 nights: Longer trips of 12 to 21 nights tend to include 9-20 nights on safari, usually split across two to five different areas, sometimes in two or more countries.
- 21 to 50 nights: Sometimes we are lucky enough to work with guests who are taking a sabbatical from work or who are retired and just love to travel. In these trips, the possibilities become almost infinite and can include a half dozen or more countries.
Cost of an African Safari
African safari tours range from relatively pricey to eye-wateringly expensive. For the core safari nights in a trip, you can expect to spend USD 500 to 3500 per person per night.
The two dominant price factors are the specific lodges that you choose to include in your trip and how many people you are bringing (solo safari can be impractically expensive, whilst the economies of scale are usually reached at around 4-6 guests).
If you have a higher budget, we will help you determine which camps do actually deliver elevated levels of service and experience. We will also highlight other subtle ways in which your trip can be raised to another level, including the use of whole camp bookings, private guides and vehicles, helicopter explorations of remote areas etc.
If you have a medium budget, the best ways to keep a lid on costs are to travel out of the Jul-Oct dry season and to carefully choose lower-priced lodges. You can also reduce the number of core safari nights and deploy time in more cost-effective beach, town and rural locations. We will help you understand where to trim and where to splash in order to achieve the best overall experience.
If you have a lower budget, then talk to us about last-minute booking options, which can deliver some extraordinary discounts. Failing that, we can always look at other fundamentally less pricey safari countries.
What Makes a Good Safari Tour?
There are certain key traits which betray the quality of a safari tour. Here are a few things to look out for when making your deliberations …
- True wilderness: Some safari areas are enormous wildernesses, whilst others are small fenced reserves. You will have to decide for yourself how important that is to your enjoyment.
- Private or public: Many of the best safari areas in Africa are private conservancies, where visitor numbers are very low and there should be no risk of vehicle traffic.
- Seasonality: It is critical that a safari be perfectly tuned to the seasonal patterns of weather, wildlife and visitor traffic. You can rely on us to be particularly obsessive about this issue.
- Small lodges: Most of the very best safari lodges have less than ten rooms, some less than five. When a lodge exceeds twenty rooms, alarm bells should really start to sound.
- Safari guiding: The quality of the safari guiding is critical your trip. A bad guide can drive past all the animals, a great guide can make an empty landscape entertaining.
- Ethos: The best safari operations are run by people who have dedicated their lives to conservation. If an operation feels to commercial, then you’ve taken a wrong turn.
The Best Safari Lodges in Africa
Africa has around 2300 safari lodges. We are able to include any of these properties in your trip.
Firstly, there are the truly high-end lodges, which are in the very best locations and offer the highest levels of guiding, hospitality and consistency, suitable for demanding guests.
Secondly, there are the relatively good value camps, which are also in excellent locations and also take their guiding very seriously, but which typically offer lower levels of luxury and have the potential to be slightly less consistent in their delivery, suitable for more easy-going guests.
The properties that we generally prefer to avoid in Africa are the large sausage-factory-type places, which deliver nasty low-quality safari experiences to guests who appear to be on a very different agenda. We also need to avoid very simple lodges, where the experience can be too unreliable for us to recommend.
You can always expect absolute honesty from us when describing the various lodges and camps. Our primary motivation is to figure out which ones will suit you the best.
