Tanzania and Zanzibar 2009

Organised Adventure - Travelling on a Group Tour

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The Adventure Company is a travel agent in the same genre as Exodus, Explore or Intrepid Travel for example. That is, companies offering organised trips with fixed departure dates, for limited size groups, often involving more adventurous activities or unusual destinations and with an emphasis on local culture and economies. By this I mean that local guides, local transport and locally owned accommodation will be used wherever possible. I have now been on three Adventure Company trips. My first was a week in Turkey on an activity holiday and later the same year I booked a short tour of Vietnam whilst I was already travelling around the SE Asia region. I was very happy with both experie...Read More

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Selous Game Reserve

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Attraction | "Lesser Spotted Safari Destination"

Selous Game Reserve Photo - Selous Game Reserve, Tanzania, Africa

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Selous Game Reserve is located in the south of Tanzania and as can be seen from maps it is much larger than more famous game reserves in the country such as the Serengeti. Often, you will see reference to Selous being the largest, but it should be noted that much of the game reserve is not open to safari visitors.I had not been on safari before and did not have a specific preference for one game reserve over another; I chose an organised tour with an itinerary that overall best fitted my needs and the safari days happened to be in Selous. My reading around on Selous before booking did not to put me off.I travelled to Selous from Dar es Salaam by train which took four hours and cost...Read More

Selous Game Reserve is located in the south of Tanzania and as can be seen from maps it is much larger than more famous game reserves in the country such as the Serengeti. Often, you will see reference to Selous being the largest, but it should be noted that much of the game reserve is not open to safari visitors.

I had not been on safari before and did not have a specific preference for one game reserve over another; I chose an organised tour with an itinerary that overall best fitted my needs and the safari days happened to be in Selous. My reading around on Selous before booking did not to put me off.
I travelled to Selous from Dar es Salaam by train which took four hours and cost $25 in a comfortable first class compartment. The train operates twice a week, I always enjoy a train ride and this was no exception, the last two hours are through the reserve itself and I enjoyed looking for animals for the first hour before darkness fell.

We disembarked from the train at Kisaki, the step from train to the ground was a big one, at least hip height for me and I am 5 foot 8. We then had to make our way in pitch black across a field or something (I don't know I couldn't see) to the vehicles which had been sent from the lodge we were booked into. It certainly was adventurous but I wish I had been told to keep a torch handy.
For those that don't like train journeys or want to travel on one of the five days of the week that the train does not operate, then it is possible to fly from Dar es Salaam, Arusha or Zanzibar. The planes will be small, about twelve seats and the flights cost around US$150 - US$200 one way. It is also possible to travel by road and this takes six hours. At the end of my trip, I took the flight to Zanzibar which takes about an hour.

On our first day we departed at around 8am after breakfast in three separate vehicles with between four and six people in each. There were six in my vehicle which was an open sided land rover, we sat in two rows of three, the front row was higher up than the driver's cab and the back row was higher than the front row so we all had very good views.

We were incredibly fortunate with the number and variety of animals we saw. I was so excited to see my first giraffe. We ended up seeing them everywhere, often in large groups of maybe about fifteen. Zebra, impala, warthogs and water buffalo were also in abundance. The elephants were harder to spot as they tended to stay in the trees, but we saw a few family groups and an enormous bull elephant by himself.

At around lunchtime, we started our boat safari, an experience I understand is not available in other Tanzanian game reserves. This was a great opportunity to see crocodiles and hippos up close, although a bit scary at times!

In the afternoon, we came across a family of wild dogs sitting in the shade under some trees. We were able to get extremely close to them and this was very exciting for some people, apparently it is uncommon to see wild dogs, but I do not really like even domestic dogs and they looked much the same to me, although a funny colour. I was desperate to see some cats and the perfect ending to my day was when we found a couple of lionesses sleeping under a tree. Again we were literally right next to them in our vehicle and whilst they took a look at us, they didn’t really give a hoot. This day is probably one of the most memorable of my life.

The next morning half of the group went on a walking safari and the others another game drive. I was on the walking safari but did not enjoy it at all, we spent most of our time gazing at animal dung and ants which some seemed to find interesting but it did not float my boat and I wished I had stayed in bed. It was also incredibly muggy although not hot. In the afternoon the idea was to swap over but the lightweights chickened out of their walking safari and opted for another game drive instead. I don't blame them, I would not have wanted to walk around for a couple of hours in that heat either. Game drives this day were not as successful as the day before as there had been rain which meant that animals did not need to wander far to find water. However there was still plenty to see.

Just outside the game reserve is a Masai village. On my final full day, I decided to go on a village tour. It was quite short, but very interesting to see the village and meet some local people.

As I have not been on safari before, I cannot compare Selous to anywhere else. I have heard that Serengeti can get busy with safari vehicles, well other than the ones which went out with us, I think I only saw one other in three days. I was very pleased with the animals I saw and the photographs I managed to get, my only disappointment was that I did not see more cats.
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Member Rating 4 out of 5 on August 26, 2009

Selous Game Reserve

Tanzania, Africa

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Sable Mountain Lodge

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Hotel | "A Tent with a View"

Sable Mountain Lodge Photo - Sable Mountain Lodge, Tanzania, Africa

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I recently travelled to Tanzania on an Adventure Company organised tour, my trip included a safari in the Selous Game Reserve in Tanzania and Sable Mountain Lodge was the base for four nights. Sable Mountain lodge is situated just outside the Selous Game Reserve, I saw no disadvantage to being just outside the game reserve rather than being in it, so nothing to get hung up about here. It is a short and enjoyable drive to the park entrance and we usually saw wildlife along the way. The advantage of being just outside is that accommodation is a lot cheaper!There are three types of accommodation available at Sable Mountain Lodge; stone cottages, tented rooms and honeymoon suites which...Read More

Member Rating 4 out of 5 on August 26, 2009

Sable Mountain Lodge
Selous Game Reserve
Tanzania, Africa
+255 22 2110507

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Dhow Palace Hotel

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Hotel | "Charming and Historic Hotel"

Dhow Palace Hotel Photo - Dhow Palace Hotel, Zanzibar, Tanzania

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The Dhow Palace Hotel was my home for the three nights I spent in Stone Town, Zanzibar. As was the case with other hotels on this organised trip, I did not select the hotel and merely discovered I would be staying here during the course of my trip. I flew to Zanzibar from the Selous Game reserve and after reclaiming baggage we set off on the ten minute drive to the hotel. As we were in a group of thirteen, checking in was perhaps a bit more of a palaver than it would be for most people but nothing to grumble about. Whilst we waited for the staff to get organised we admired our surroundings in the lobby.The building the hotel now occupies is over a hundred years old and w...Read More

The Dhow Palace Hotel was my home for the three nights I spent in Stone Town, Zanzibar. As was the case with other hotels on this organised trip, I did not select the hotel and merely discovered I would be staying here during the course of my trip.

I flew to Zanzibar from the Selous Game reserve and after reclaiming baggage we set off on the ten minute drive to the hotel. As we were in a group of thirteen, checking in was perhaps a bit more of a palaver than it would be for most people but nothing to grumble about. Whilst we waited for the staff to get organised we admired our surroundings in the lobby.

The building the hotel now occupies is over a hundred years old and was formerly a merchant’s home. It simply oozes history and charm and is liberally furnished and decorated with East African and Arabian style furniture and artwork. The courtyard houses a small swimming pool, which I believe is quite unusual for hotels in the town centre.

With the formalities completed my husband and I were soon being escorted to our room, we were on the first floor in a room directly at the top of the stairs. The room was enormous and the style of furnishing we had seen downstairs continued in here. This is certainly no plush hotel, but it has bundles of style. Our room contained three traditional Swahili style beds, made of dark wood, four poster and very high, we needed little set of steps to get up. The beds are not very wide, but as we had three we took one each. The room contained other traditional style pieces of furniture. The bathroom was decorated in bright blue tiles and was of Arabian style, I found it quite hot and stuffy in the bathroom as the effects of the air conditioning in the room did not reach this far.

There are 28 rooms in the hotel and the hotel literature states that most of them have balconies, we must have been unlucky then as ours did not. It did overlook a central courtyard, but I did not like this as I felt my privacy was compromised, the other rooms around the courtyard could see straight into our room.

After a week of staying in accommodation with no air conditioning, I was very glad to find that the hotel has both fans and air conditioning units, although ours had a tendency to leak water all over the floor. The staff were quick to respond to our request for assistance and indeed throughout our stay we were pleased with the standard s of service and the general friendliness of the staff.

We did not eat any main meals in the hotel but we had breakfast every day. This is served on the roof terrace, we had to take a couple of flights of stairs as there is no lift here. I found the breakfast quite unremarkable, edible but not a fantastic start to the day.

The location of the hotel is fantastic, right in the centre of the old town on the main road. Stone Town is not terribly big though so it probably i snot hard to go wrong with hotel location generally. I would be more than happy to stay here again were I to return to Stone Town and at around US$100 a night this represents good value for money.
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Member Rating 4 out of 5 on August 26, 2009

Dhow Palace Hotel
Kenyatta Road Vuga - Stone Town
Zanzibar, Tanzania
+255 24 2233012

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Flame Tree Cottages

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Hotel | "Spice Island Retreat"

Beach at Flame Tree Cottages Photo - Flame Tree Cottages, Zanzibar, Tanzania

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One of the possible downsides of joining an organised trip is that you do not get a say in the accommodation and accordingly I simply found myself in Flametree Cottages for the final three nights of my group tour to Tanzania and Zanibar. The Flametree Cottages complex is situated in Nungwi, on the north tip of Zanzibar and it took about an hour to get there from Stone Town the capital. My first feeling upon arriving in the town was shock. I could not believe that this was a place where any tourist had ever ventured before. It was for all intents and purposes a shanty town and there was no sign of tourist dollars having brought anything to the local community. I am well travelled and have been to seve...Read More

One of the possible downsides of joining an organised trip is that you do not get a say in the accommodation and accordingly I simply found myself in Flametree Cottages for the final three nights of my group tour to Tanzania and Zanibar. The Flametree Cottages complex is situated in Nungwi, on the north tip of Zanzibar and it took about an hour to get there from Stone Town the capital. My first feeling upon arriving in the town was shock. I could not believe that this was a place where any tourist had ever ventured before. It was for all intents and purposes a shanty town and there was no sign of tourist dollars having brought anything to the local community. I am well travelled and have been to several developing countries and would normally love to wander and immerse myself in my surroundings. On this trip, I did not venture back into the town, I felt like it would be an intrusion and didn't want to be that westerner wandering around gawking at such impoverishment.

As we pulled into Flametree Cottages complex, the contrast with the town was stark but stand alone and there was nothing much to write home about and in fact I was a bit disappointed. I had expected individual cottages spread over a fairly large area so each one was quiet and private. In fact we found ourselves in chalet blocks forming three sides of a small rectangle. I was reminded of a holiday camp thirty years prior. We had a middle chalet in a block of three. I refuse to call it a cottage.

The bedroom was of an adequate size, it contained a double bed and a few feet of space all around it. Furniture and furnishings were simple, a bed, bedside tables and a small hanging space. I believe we had a small table with a kettle but we had no tea or coffee so didn't use it. We did have both air conditioning and a fan and both worked perfectly. The bathroom was quite big and had seen better days but nothing to moan about, this is Africa after all. Outside each room were a couple of chairs and a table, there was also an outside fan which made it quite pleasant to sit out at any time of the day or evening.

On the other side of the rectangle of chalets was the reception, unfortunately there was never anybody there and when assistance was required it was a case of wandering around and trying to find a member of staff. The dining area was outside, very close to the beach and it was potentially a very pleasant place to have an evening meal overlooking the sea. Near the restaurant, steps led down to the beach but unlike the neighbouring properties there were no sun loungers down there for guests' use.

We were booked into the accommodation on a half board basis. Shortly after we arrived, at about 3pm, we received a knock on the door and were told to make our starter and main course dinner selections and we were asked what time we wanted to eat. It was to become something of an annoyance to have to choose what we wanted for dinner so early every day. This appeared to be because we came as a group as other guests were not asked. Trouble was, we didn't want to be treated as a group, we wanted to be treated as individuals. This part of the trip was unescorted, there were no organised activities and most of us expected to be doing our own thing these last few days. On that first day, my husband and I asked for dinner at 7.30pm and coincidentally so had most of the others. However the chap next door told us he asked for his dinner at 8pm and was told that would not be possible. When we went down later, we found tables had been pushed together to make one big table for 13. We rather liked the look of the tables for two which had unspoilt views of the beach and sea. It was a bit much not to be allowed to have a private dinner with my husband.

Private breakfasts were not approved of either. We requested breakfast on our veranda as most people do. However when we woke up and went outside we found that the tables and chairs of the three chalets in our block had all been pushed together. Now much as I liked my fellow travellers this was irritating. I wanted to scream we are individuals and I met these people for the first time ten days ago. I could not work out why they even went to the trouble of putting all the tables together, we all got up when we wanted to and so they had to serve us breakfast separately anyway. Fortunately the one who found the big breakfast table outside his bedroom window was first up! We were last up but when they came over to serve us, I had our table moved back to our own veranda in an act of sheer defiance.

The food did not make up for the dining arrangements. Breakfast comprised old, poor quality fruit, stale bread and a couple of eggs. Coffee was instant. Dinners were often left untouched and when they weren't there was an outbreak of food poisoning that several of us, including me, were victim too. One of my companions mentioned her sickness to the assistant manager, who replied "Sorry I can't help I am on my break". Now I would not expect them to necessarily admit liability, but an expression of concern or an offer to see if there is anything she needed would have been a more appropriate response.

Most of us were dissatisfied with service from the management for some reason or another. One in the group was staying in Zanzibar an extra couple of days and initially contemplating booking the extra days here rather than change lodgings. He enquired and was told that he would need to decide right there and then and would need to pay cash. He explained he didn't have enough and was not very impressed to be told he could take a taxi all the way back to Stone Town, on the other side of the island! He also did not believe that business was booming so much so that he would need to book there and then. In the end he booked the place next door.

We asked the owners about organising airport transfers, as we were not on the group flights we needed to organise it ourselves. We had to ask about five times before anything was done. My husband asked the first evening and when I asked the same person for an update the next day she blatantly denied ever having even spoken to my husband. The non-management staff did their best for us, we all felt slightly troubled about the relationship between management and non-management, it felt and looked like the staff were terrified the whole time.

We had spent a few days in Stone Town before we arrived in this part of the island and we also did the popular Spice Island tour on the way over. So our intention was only to spend a few days swimming, snorkelling and sunbathing. The sea was turquoise and wonderfully warm and the beach whilst not pristine had lovely white sand and looked beautiful.

We had understood that this part of the island was good for snorkelling, my husband and I booked a snorkelling boat trip one day but it was about a two hour sail to get to the decent snorkelling spot and then we had to share with at least a dozen other boats. It was good snorkelling though. Some of the other people in the group opted for a half day trip, this involved snorkelling in a much closer location and unfortunately they did not see a thing.

I do not know exactly what rate I got as I bought a trip as a while. However according to the website double rooms cost about $150 a night. This seems to be about mid range price for Zanzibar. Regardless of cost, I would not be able to recommend this accommodation. Read Less

Member Rating 2 out of 5 on August 26, 2009

Flame Tree Cottages
Nungwi
Zanzibar, Tanzania
+255 24 2240100

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Movenpick Royal Palm Hotel

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Hotel | "House of Peace"

Movenpick Dar es Salaam Photo - Movenpick Royal Palm Hotel , Dar Es Salaam, Tanzania

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After a twelve day escorted tour of Tanzania including Zanzibar, my husband and I decided to round off our trip with a couple of days to ourselves. We decided to do this in Dar Es Salaam, meaning "House of Peace" in Arabic, the largest city in Tanzania. As I expected my accommodation for the rest of the trip to be at the budget end of the market, we decided to look at the luxury end of the market for these last two nights. The Movenpick is widely considered to be one of the two best hotels in Dar Es Salaam, the other one being the Hotel Kempinski. There was no particular reason we opted for the Movenpick of the two.We arrived in Dar es Salaam in the early afternoon after a short intern...Read More

After a twelve day escorted tour of Tanzania including Zanzibar, my husband and I decided to round off our trip with a couple of days to ourselves. We decided to do this in Dar Es Salaam, meaning "House of Peace" in Arabic, the largest city in Tanzania. As I expected my accommodation for the rest of the trip to be at the budget end of the market, we decided to look at the luxury end of the market for these last two nights. The Movenpick is widely considered to be one of the two best hotels in Dar Es Salaam, the other one being the Hotel Kempinski. There was no particular reason we opted for the Movenpick of the two.

We arrived in Dar es Salaam in the early afternoon after a short internal flight on a scary twelve-seat plane from Zanzibar. The hotel is about 12km from the airport and we took a taxi from the stand outside, the rates to many individual hotels are pre-set which takes away some of the anxiety people can have about being ripped off by taxi drivers on arrival. The hotel is in a central location in the city but nicely situated just on the outskirts of the main hustle and bustle. Dar es Salaam, especially the traffic, can be manic. I am a little embarrassed to say that on this occasion we decided to skip exploring the city and didn't leave the hotel until we left for good, but apparently the city attractions and shops are within easy walking distance.

First impressions were very good, a spacious and fairly grand reception area, we were greeted with courtesy and presented with a refreshing glass of fruit juice as we checked in. We were offered assistance with our bags but as they had wheels we were happy to take them up ourselves.

The room was excellent. We had booked on the cheapest available rate and thus were very pleased with the spaciousness of the room, 25 square metres to be precise. As well as a king size bed, there was a small seating area, a desk as well as some storage space. The TV was a modern flat screen and wall mounted but the channels were not terribly interesting. The room was furnished in attractive shades of chocolate, beige and cream and everything looked to be in pristine condition. The bathroom was perhaps not quite up to the standard of the bedroom, but it was perfectly acceptable with a white suite and marble tiling.

We were at the hotel for one and a half days and two nights and didn't leave the grounds. Upon arrival I decided to book a massage and had no problem getting an appointment for a few hours later. The hotel does not have a proper spa area, although it might refer to it as that. In fact the treatments are carried out in converted bedrooms on the first floor. The massage was about US$50 for an hour, which seems reasonable. I booked another appointment for an Indian head massage the next day.

We spent a fair amount of time relaxing around the outdoor pool. The pool itself was quite large and the area around it was very pleasant. We were there over a weekend and did not find it all crowded, there were plenty of sun loungers but the area was large enough for them to be comfortably spaced out. There was a bar area nearby and it was possible to either go over to order food and drinks or every so often somebody would come around and take orders.

Breakfast was included in our room rate and this is served in the Serengeti restaurant on the ground floor. This is a very large restaurant, partly indoors and partly outdoors and was quite popular in the evenings as well, especially the outside tables. Breakfast was excellent with a wide choice of hot and cold buffet items and also a hot plate where eggs or pancakes are cooked to order. I had an omelette one morning and pancakes the next, yummy.

There were two other eateries, also on the ground floor. The first was café style serving teas, coffees cakes and ice creams. The other an Italian style restaurant, L'Oliveto, we booked a table in here on our final night. Very impressive décor, not quite so impressive food. I had to send some rancid prawns back, otherwise everything was just fine but nothing extraordinary.

We did really like the bar, dark wood, spit and sawdust style. On our first night we enjoyed a few cocktails here, although they were out of tequila which limited the options. Unfortunately on the second night they closed the bar and converted it into a disco or something. Who wants to go to a hotel disco? We were very disappointed.

When it was time to leave, check out like check in was quick and smooth and the hotel transfer we booked the day before ready to go. Overall, a very enjoyable stay.

I booked directly with the hotel and the price was given was US$240 per night in a standard room with breakfast. Read Less

Member Rating 4 out of 5 on June 26, 2009

Movenpick Royal Palm Hotel
PO Box 791

+255 22 211 2416

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