African Odyssey Reviews

Travelmarvel tour Voyage Through Africa (from Capetown to Nairobi) was amazing because it offers probably the greatest wildlife experience in the world. From the relative safety of a large 4 wheel drive Land Cruiser vehicle or a large boat on the river, you can view, within a few metres on many game drives within various National Parks in multiple countries, ...read more animals such as Lions, Elephants, Zebras, Wilderbeast, Antelopes, Giraffes, Hippos, Buffalo, Wart Hogs, Crocodiles and a variety of birds.

The accommodation was always first rate even in some remote places within National Parks. Visits to a Masai Village was a wonderful highlight with their singing and dancing including the children and discussions with young Masai men about their education and future. An optional visit in Soweto including an after school care centre was enjoyable to see the beautiful children.

Only negative in the main program was a long exhausting drive in Kenya between Lake Nakuru and the Masai Mara though this did enable us to see along the way some real communities of local people. Travel Marvel should consider replacing that long drive with another included flight. Optional Excursions in Cape Town South Africa, namely Botanical Gardens and Heritage (incl Langa) tours were not value for money.

The Tour Leaders in both Southern Africa (Christel) and East Africa (Blassy) were superb, particularly Christel who was simply wonderful in all respects, as were the Drivers / Guides particularly Raphael in East Africa. Raphael was an excellent safe driver with a superhuman eye for sighting animals, a true believer in animal and environmental protection and was knowledgeable, caring and humorous.

Booking online with Global Journeys was smooth, responsive and efficient as always using Hannah who is extremely easy to do business with. That said, a recommended improvement would be for Global Journeys, in conjunction with Travelmarvel, to automatically provide greater direction, clear advice and removal of uncertainty re any need to secure a Visa in advance of travel for certain countries. For example on this tour, Australian travellers must secure before they travel, a Kenyan E-Visa online directly from the Kenyan Government website whereas whilst Visas for Zimbabwe and Zambia are required, these are organised at the border by the Southern Africa Tour Leader for everyone in the travel group which thus avoids significant hassles for individual travellers either pre-travel or at the border.

Yvonne at Global Journeys was fantastic to deal with for our booking of this trip. Promptly responded to all enquiries and gave us the correct information regarding required visas which others in our group hadn't received from their agents. For a trip this long I would definitely recommend arriving a day early and taking a few days either mid trip or ...read more at the end to recover from the pace of travel before returning home. All guides and drivers were excellent, particularly those from Albatros in Kenya. Would use Global Journeys again to book. Some of the optional excursions would have been cheaper booked on the ground.