Avoid Jenman Safaris if You Want to Learn About Africa
If you want to learn about Africa, most definitely avoid Jenman’s small group tours of Kenya and Tanzania
Jenman advertised our “East Africa Migration Discoverer” tour as a “guided tour”. Only after our tour began did we realize Jenman had no intentation of providing guides. Instead, it provided drivers who it claims were also guides. They most certainly were not.
Our driver/guides were excellent at driving, skillfully navigating horrendous roads and spotting elusive wildlife. However, they provided little to no information as to what we were to see, what we were seeing and what we had seen. Any attempts to do so on the road would have been futile as Jenman provided them with no way to be heard throughout the large, rattly, open air, eight passenger jeeps. When not driving, Jenman required them to spend their time maintaining, cleaning and loading/unloading the jeeps.
Jenman’s responses to our post-tour comments on this issue are interesting. It vehemently, without compromise, maintains, even though it failed to tell us:
1. we should have known separate guides are not provided in East Africa;
2. we should have known inaudible or no commentary is still commentary; and
3. we should have known if we wanted guides we should have taken Jenman’s more expensive private tours.
We loved Africa and plan to return. However, next time we will ensure when a tour company advertises a guided tour, it will provide a guide.