Reviews of Shipungo Safari & Tours

I would recommend it at any time

The trip was beautiful. Our tour guide CAM was great. He showed us so many animals. Aron and Shine were Great. Good Time. Food was great.

Afrika Girls

Professional and Attentive

Our ten day tour which included a two night mokoro trip, walking safari, and mobile safari through Moremi, Savuti, and Chobe reserves was outstanding. The planning of our tour was easy, the trip itself was an amazing family experience, and we would recommend Shipungu for others without any hesitation. Our guide, Voice, was a true professional. He was incredible at reading tracks and finding hidden cats especially! He also is just a wonderful human and we enjoyed getting to know him and all of the staff that traveled with us from site to site. Avelino (the chef) in particular impressed us with his campside bread making skills and delicious meals! We felt taken care of at every turn and the staff managed a casual yet professional tone that suited our family perfectly - attentive but gave us privacy and generally fun people to spend an extended camping trip with! Thank you Shipungu!! We hope to be back someday to do it again!!

Amanda Sullivan

Very professionally Operator providing top guiding, delicious bush kitchen & excellent camping gear

Shipungo is a very professional tour operator and highly recommendable! Mark has been responding to my requests and questions always very fast. All the things he promised to me have been fulfilled 100%. We (family with three children age 11/14/16) had a great 7 day Mobile Camping Safari through Central Kalahari, Makgadikgadi, Naxai Pan and Moremi. Our guide Kem was very experienced, driving very safe and enabling great animal encounters with wild dogs (hunting impalas), leopards (eating a kill) and lions. The support team (Simon, Bruce and Slow) provided a great camping experience with fresh and delicious food and professional camping equipment. In my view it could not be better!

vincenzo presti

A surprisingly interesting trip with more animals than expected in a dry season

All the feedback can be summarized like this: Car, camp equipment, landscape/animals and guide named Voice are excellent. Food ok, shower not as promised but hygiene arrangements ok. Dry season makes it a bit harder to find animals there, but we still found plenty different species! Detailed comments for the agency, and a few pieces of advice to other travellers: Communications - Guides are not always reminding us tourists of the obvious: Always bring warm clothes (sweater/jacket, thin gloves, pants, etc) for morning drives, it gets surprisingly cold in the backseat of a 4x4 at 80 km/h 06:30. Also, boat trips sometimes lack adequate shade, so always bring sunscreen and sunglasses. And of course, ALWAYS bring binoculars (~10x30). - Dietary restrictions (lactose-free diet for one person) had not been communicated to the chef at the camp. Activities - Our guide Voice was excellent. He worked very hard driving us around (6+4 hrs on the second day!) trying to find us animals and birds to watch. It is dry season so we knew it would be difficult to find anything. We were happy to see more than we expected. Unfortunately, no big cats but that is not your fault. Voice (and Left) also knew a lot of bird species and animals which was very useful. For our entire stay in Botswana we observed (and got the names of) 35 land animals and 49 bird species. So we are very satisfied. - We also enjoy talking to locals about culture, society, politics, and getting to know people. We felt on the first evening that the crew were a bit distant; not socializing much. The chef (Rap) and the camp manager (Left) had planned to eat by themselves. We heard that this is because some wealthy guests do not want to have to eat with the crew. However, in our European and East-Asian cultures this is very strange, so we invited them to join us. Still, they did not seem very talkative, nor felt comfortable talking about their families, society or even sports. The second evening they opened up much more and we felt more comfortable. It is okay if they are introvert and shy. And Voice might be tired after driving so much. But I really hope they have not received instructions from Shipungo to avoid talking with the guests. Experiencing Botswana is more than just the animals. Especially since many of the animals are shy, so it would be nice to have some “entertainment” in the evening, such as just learning about Botswana. Accommodations and meals - Camp is of very high quality, and we felt spoiled being treated well by three staff. Bush toilet was good, tent was good, beds were good. - We were promised in writing and with pictures that there would be a simple shower, but there was not. Voice explained that it is very dry there so water access is limited. Although we understand the situation, and we actually feel it would have been unnecessary to bring 50 extra liters just for a couple of showers, we felt a bit misled given what we were promised. They did provide water basins with a few liters of water for cleaning ourselves, but we did not realized before we left that we could have taken the supplied smaller towels into the water to clean ourselves. For the future, it would be advisable to remind the guests of this opportunity. We just used the water for cleaning our hands… It should also be said that we did not get that sweaty – either we are int the shadow of the car, or at the camp during night. Minimal personal hygiene is more about the private parts, underarms, feet and hands. Having a better setup for this would have been nice. - Meals were decent, but not very exciting. Zimbabwean and Botswanan tour operators should not underestimate local cuisine, as not all tourists want to eat European food when travelling to Africa. We got spaghetti, rice, pasta and salad as accessories to our meat. Pap would have been more natural. Some other kinds of vegetables and starches such as pap would have been more exciting. We got such local food in the Okavanga Delta camp (another trip) so it is possible. - Also, we were promised according to the itinerary to have dessert on the second dinner as well, but we did not get it. Even if I could not eat some diary products, my wife could have eaten it. Though there was plenty of food in total. - We also informed beforehand that we would prefer the vegetarian sausages but we only got meat. Other experiences - Garbage is a huge problem (everywhere in the world). It gets sad when seeing it right outside (and sometimes inside) the parks. Local and central government must step up and fix this. - Considering how important tourism is for the company and guides such as Voice, the government should disallow tourists travelling by themselves into the parks, or charge them much more than cars travelling with a guide. Those tourists leave very little money in the country, except for a small entrance fee. Transportation - Pickup was delayed 30 min, without us being informed. 20 min past we were informed by the hotel that they would be delayed 20 min… In the future, consider providing WhatsApp-contact information between guests and the crew for these things. Similar thing happened with another trip we went to (different company). And after picking us up, they went to collect water tanks and fuel, making us wait even further (collecting the water in the village near the park makes sense to do on the way, we are just referring to the water tanks). These kinds of delays indicate poor planning and lack of respect of the guests’ time. It would look better to arrange such things beforehand. - Car has good quality seats. - Much longer trip to the park than expected, but nothing to do about that. Bring an audio book.

Stephan Daus

Very accommodating and professional

Our plans that had been in the making for over half a year fell through and Shipungo really helped us out by being extremely accommodating at very short notice. We phoned them relatively late in the afternoon the day before we were looking to book an activity. Mark came over to our lodge to discuss our options immediately (what service!) and we promptly booked a mokoro excursion. We really enjoyed it; the guides and drivers and really everyone we dealt with were very nice and helpful. Highly recommend booking with them.

Mieke

reliable and professional

The holder Marc , was very professional and reliable , he was always present both for departures and arrivals , and his driver too.

Luca Manghi

Serious and professional

We were on a very tight budget but we were right with Shipungo and we were able to make two magnificent excursions to the Delta and Moremi. They came on time and the guides were very professional.

Daniel Tena