[vc_row css=”.vc_custom_1623927211024{padding-top: 5% !important;padding-bottom: 5% !important;}”][vc_column][vc_column_text]Friendly Adventure Safaris is a Tanzanian tour and travel company that specializes in organizing honeymoons, romantic getaways, student vacations and holidays, group safaris, family safaris, charity tours, big five safaris, mountaineering adventure, cultural escapade, and beach holidays. Safaris to the Masai Mara, Serengeti, Uganda, Rwanda, and Congo are also available.
With all of the fantastic safari activities and attractions in the East African area, you may combine numerous safari activities while riding in one of the top safari cars in the country.
Actually, we wouldn’t call ourselves tour companies in Tanzania if we didn’t support safaris in all of East Africa. So, in essence, we would describe ourselves as an all-around inbound destination management firm and tour operator in East Africa. Choosing many safari firms to manage different aspects of your vacation might be a pain at times, especially when it comes to coordination time during transfers. Because they already have your travel schedules, if you utilize a single travel agency, they can easily coordinate your transportation between places.
Our safari guides are not only informed, but also well-spoken, ethical, polite, and cautious.[/vc_column_text][/vc_column][/vc_row][vc_row][vc_column][vc_column_text]
I and my girlfriend decided to go to Uganda foe a honeymoon and the choice to use Friendly Gorillas was the best.
Ronald our safari guide was very friendly,... read more knowledgable and above all flexible. he took us through out our stay in Uganda and made our Gorilla encounter pretty amazing.
We enjoyed the Kampala Rolex at one of the best restaurants in Uganda - Cafe Javas. You really wanna try these guys out and i promise you will never regret.
trevasp December 3, 2019
This was the most amazing trip ever. Friendly gorillas are true professionals. Their prices are competitive, their guides are excellent and so knowledgeable, and their tours are planned and well... read more organized. Anthony and Toni kept us abreast of all the plans of the tour since before we even set foot in Uganda. They were also flexible and allowed us to add more activities to our tour: we even ended up extending our trip with them. If you are between travel companies, think no more. Friendly gorillas is the way to go. Ask for Toni our tour guide!
678vivim July 18, 2022
Our Uganda trip was merely beyond our expectations. Thank you to Anthony for planning and to our guide/driver/now friend Chris for being the best guide we could have hoped for.... read more />
Chris was the perfect guide. He was super informed, helpful and advised us on how to make the very most out of our itinerary at every stage. He was friendly, good-natured and an excellent driver. He told us a lot about Uganda's culture and its people. Not once did we feel unsafe the whole trip. His recommendations really made our trip.
The car we used and the lodges Anthony chose were clean and had very great food especially Lake Bunyonyi Rock Resort.
We didn’t really know what to expect visiting Uganda, but it's truly one of the best trips we have done. While we had a structured itinerary, we were prepared to be flexible to take into account tips from Chris, and it really paid off.
Thank you, Anthony & Chris 🙂
836aviana December 2, 2019
My 6am early start including stopping for gas right out of the gates (guess they forgot they were picking me up and going to Maasai Mara).
2nd stop was... read more heading NW from centre of Kampala (opposite way of Maasai Mara) to the office to get 2 tire covers that’s required to enter the park (no idea why they’re wasting my time to do this and it wasn’t done the night before + we waited for 30 minutes for Anthony to show up).
3rd stop was an hour outside of Kampala at a “cheap” gas station to actually fill up the tank.
4th stop was an issue with the back wheel that seemed to go away
5th stop was because the radiator was over heating (a local gave us some water)
6th stop was to exchange the $100 USD bill Anthony had given the driver for gas etc. I did the currency conversion myself because what kind of rate are you going to possibly get 3 hours outside of Kampala and who could possibly exchange that much!
7th stop was getting 3rd party insurance for me the tourist in the vehicle
8th stop was the battery connection that came loose because of all the bumps at high speed
9th stop was the radiator again
10th stop was to get the radiator fixed at a spot with a mechanic
The actual tour & hotels were great.
The only thing you need to worry about for the gorillas is getting there and back as it’s all cookie cutter/ same thing by all tour operators.
Ask for pictures of your vehicle, what year and model, last time it was serviced, any issues with the vehicle historically, what happens if it breaks down etc in the middle of no where.
Took us 13.5 hours to get there and soured the experience.
Alba901 August 13, 2021
Tony, our driver and tour guide, was absolutely wonderful. Not only is he a kind high-character person, he is very knowledgeable about Uganda and really took the time to answer... read more all of our questions. Tony took the time to go the extra mile to ensure our entire trip was special, and to show us his culture and beautiful country. Every minute, from when arrived early to pick us up to when he helped us with our luggage at the airport at the end of our trip, we felt completely taken care of by Tony. Friendly Gorilla Safaris was wonderful, from Anthony promptly responding to all of our emails and questions, to Tony making our trip great. Definitely recommend them!
The Gorilla hike was absolutely amazing and a once in a lifetime experience, I could not recommend it enough! You have to do this tour and you have to ask for Tony to make it even more wonderful.
A couple tips:
- Ensure that the hotel is close to where your permitted hike is located. I did not know that there are 5 locations where you can hike to see the Gorillas, depending on where your permit is for. Double check that the hotel you stay at is convenient to your permit hike site. Our hotel was the Rushaga Gorilla Havens Lodge, which was absolutely Wonderful and you can check out my review of them, and they are close to one of the hiking sites but it turned out that our permit was for another location so we had a 2 hour drive in the morning to get to our permit hiking site. It made for an especially early morning and a closer hotel to our hike would have been nice. Though the Rushaga really was wonderful.
- If there is a way to choose where you hike and what group of gorillas to see then you should 100% ask for the Nyakagezi group. That is the group we visited, and it was Amazing. The hike was only about 1.5 hour to see the family of gorillas which had 3 silverbacks and 2 babies. The rangers we were with were all lovely. They were so helpful to ensure we got amazing views and photos of the gorillas, and they answered all of our questions. We felt completely safe with them and had a wonderful time.
Once in a lifetime trip with our awesome tour guide Tony, definitely recommend it!!
CM2909 January 11, 2020
My friend and I have overall been disappointed by this tour company.
The main issue has been the guide /driver, a very kind man who unfortunately didn't possess... read more the necessaty dynamism and self confidence to be a guide, and who was rather extremely soft spoken and mannered. We had a hard time communicating with him and having our questions answered throughout the whole holiday.
It wouldn't have been a major issue in itself hadn't his gross time mismanagement made us miss our evening flight on the last day. We followed his advice on departure time (even waited for him in the morning!) and clearly mentioned multiple times the latest we had to be at the airport. We ended up arriving 20 mins before our flight. He didn't take any possible traffic in consideration and even wanted us to stop at the Equator when we had already been delayed by lunch.
I have of course tried to have the new tickets (300$) reimboursed by the company. We managed to reach the manager Anthony, whose Whatsapp answers had been a bit patchy throughout the week already, after 1h30 of the phone ringing out.
Despite admitting it was their fault and knowing we had to take the following flight as my friend would have otherwise missed her international connection, he came up with various excuses until it was too late and we didn't have any another choice than to pay ourselves. Also, despite initially saying he wanted to reach a compromise and somehow help, he has since stopped answering my messages (as expected).
The manager had also booked some - if not all - the accomodation at the last minute. I had asked them one month and a half in advance to book a specific place - way below the budget the package allowed, by the way - where a friend stayed, and they told us the night before our arrival in Uganda that the place was fully booked for the first night. Luckily my friend, knowing we were supposed to come, had kept a room for us, but hadn't this happened we would have missed our stay there even after specifically asking for it well in advance (and, I repeat, this place was a homestay way cheaper than the category we were supposed to have).
Last but not least, the car (whose doors didn't hold open and whose icebox didn't work) broke for two days in a row, making us us miss a whole game drive one afternoon and part of it the following day.
I add that I live in Africa and both my friend and I have already quite extensively travelled the continent. This was the first time we had such issues with a tour operator.
I and my girlfriend decided to go to Uganda foe a honeymoon and the choice to use Friendly Gorillas was the best.
My 6am early start including stopping for gas right out of the gates (guess they forgot they were picking me up and going to Maasai Mara).
