Maningo had immense depth of knowledge having been a guide for over 25 years. Even with all that time doing the job, he was as eager as we were to get out and watch animals live their lives. He answered most questions from his own experience but also paid attention to what other guides and youtube videos said about possible animal behaviors. He knew many many guides and they all help each other to optimize the viewing for their clients. Even with just an iPhone camera that has only a 10x telephoto lens, I got great photos, thanks to Maningo knowing how to work with those limitations. He showed us not only the big charismatic animals but also the lesser known but fascinating ones e.g. rock hyraxes which are elephants’ closest living relatives but are the size of bunnies. He was very knowledgeable about birds too. He also identified plants, such as a date tree growing wild. He anticipated road conditions affected by the weather and worked around it.
“Access 2 Tanzania was awesome! Visiting Africa and going on Safari was on my bucket list and A2T fulfilled it completely. My husband likes spontaneity but I insist on long term planning so when my husband told me he wanted to go to Tanzania in just over 3 weeks I laughed. Two days later he came to me with a plan that Casey and he put together. I was dumb-founded. It was not a canned tour planned by A2T for a group. It was a private itinerary planned by my husband and Casey to accommodate exactly what WE wanted to do and where WE wanted to go. We left for Tanzania 3 weeks later! Amazing!
We changed plans many times after the initial plan and Casey was very patient and accommodated us with no resistance. Casey always had answers to our questions and gave us recommendations that we would never had thought of. A2T didn’t just give ‘lip service’ they provided what they said they would and told us what they could not. I questioned this because they offer so many wonderful options and I wondered what we would actually get when we arrived. Another thing I was pleased with is that during our planning Casey did not constantly try to ‘up sell’ us.
‘Wilfred’ was our guide and he was wonderful. He is such a nice, good and fun person. We felt so lucky to have him. That said, we spoke to others from A2T and they also felt the same about their guides so it is clear A2T chooses their guides carefully. (We still feel lucky to have Wilfred throughout our safari!)
I wish I could remember the names of all the others that we met and who helped us from A2T. We didn’t run into one bad seed. It’s been 5 months since we returned from Africa and although the names are not clear in my mind the warm, wonderful and exciting feeling of Africa will never fade.
If you have the opportunity to go to Africa go with Access 2 Tanzania! AMAZING!!”