Umoja Motherland Tours

We booked three trips with Umoji, the Uganda safari, the trek up Kilimanjaro, and, my wife's stay at the Amani Villi.
I have already reviewed the Uganda safari and trek up Kilimanjaro in separate correspondence. I am only addressing my wife's stay at Amani Villa in this review.

The planning was very difficult because we did not learn of the proper location - Amani Villa - until late in the planning stage. At one time or another, three different locations were provided to us and we had to do the research to find the correct location. My rating for Umoji is one star.

My wife loved her stay at Amani Villa. She will rate Amani Villa as five star!
Kilifaith Adventures provided transportation to and from Amani Villa and Grace did a fantastic job driving so we give her five stars.

Umoji booked my wife for ten nights, including three meals each day. Umoji should have only booked her for eight nights so we paid for two extra nights and extra meals. I am requesting reimbursement for the two extra nights and meals paid to Amani Villa on our behalf. Our planning only included eight nights, not ten nights.!

We actually booked three separate trips with Agnes at Umoja Motherland Tours; My wife and I participated in Uganda Safari, my daughter and I - Trek on Mt Kilimanjaro, and, my wife's stay at Amani Villa. I am only going to address the Trek on Mt. Kilimanjaro in this review.

The planning for this trip was a disaster. We were provided with the wrong trekking company for months and only learned of the real company, by our own investigations. a few days before the trek commenced. Each trekking company does business differently and you must work with the correct company to get the correct answers to your questions.

On the first night of our trip, they changed our hotel from the Arusha Lodge to the Kerama Silent Lodge and this change was made at the last minute. My daughter had been staying at the Arusha Lodge (independent of our trip) and paid a few hundred dollars extra for the convenience of meeting us at the Aushsa Lodge. My daughter said the Arusha Lodge was much better so Umoji saved money by putting us in an inferior hotel.
I got food poisoning from breakfast at the Kerama Silent Lodge and was as sick as possible during my first day of trekking on Kilimanjaro. Fortunately, I recovered enough to complete the eight day trek to the summit. the guides will vouch that I was so sick on the first day they were going to cancel my trek, but out of good grace they gave me another day of trekking to demonstrate my ability and each following day I got stronger and stronger.

On the third day of the trek, my daughter came down with food/water poisoning We learned at this point that they did not treat the drinking water or water used for cooking. This is unheard of for foreign travelers! They gave us the option of chlorinating the water and we gladly accepted this option. This should have been brought to our attention by the trekking company before we stepped a foot on the mountain.

Umoji subcontracted Kilifaith Adventures. I believe Kilifaith did a great job transporting us to and from the trail head, (thankyou Grace!) and the guides were supurbguiding us up the mountain.(thanki you Moses and Josepth and the thirteen porters!).

I will give Kilifaith five stars for making our trek a success. Please inform all customers in the future if they do or do not want their water treated before consumptions! The planning for this trip by Umoji coudl not have been worse so I will give them one star.

I don't know where to start. Agnes put my safety on the line, which is absolutely not okay. I joined my dad in Tanzania to climb Kilimanjaro. I arrived 2 days early and booked myself at the hotel she said my dad would be staying at, Arusha Planet Lodge. I did not find out until I was in Tanzania that my dad was not booked at the lodge. I had to figure out transport to the accurate hotel and also could have saved quite a bit of money as the hotel she had actually booked him in was much cheaper. This was the least of my worries. Several times prior to departure both my dad and I asked for the name of the guiding company. Agnes would not provide it. She then sent us a link to a company and said that is who we were going with. I asked her questions about items needed for the climb, but when she went silent and was not responding to emails I decided to email the company directly. Turns out, that was NOT the company we were hiking with. Instead, the day before we are expected to climb, we find out the name of the actual company we were actually going with. Agnes stated sleeping bags were included in our price, they were not and were added charges. The company we ended up going with is not reputable and cut corners at the expense of our health and safety. We had unpurified drinking water, to include visibly alive and swimming worm like creatures in our water bottles. My dad and I both suffered from extreme stomach illness and dehydration. All reputable companies on the mountain purify drinking water. Agnes misled us, or purposefully deceived us, at the expense of our health. From the wrong hotel, wrong trekking company, wrong inclusions, to unresponsive communication. I would never recommend she plan a trip in Tanzania and would expect this to be rectified in some way as this was not just simple confusion.

My son already wrote you about our disappointment regarding our trip planning experience with Peter. He also told you about changes with respect to some of our lodgings without our knowledge. NOTE: Someone from kimkim personally reached out to and spoke with my son. This was my 3rd trip arranged through kimkim and the first, and hopefully last one, to have a negative experience with the planning part of the trip.
However, on the flip side, we were so very blessed to have Eli as our full time guide and driver!!! He has 15 years experience and willingly shared so many wonderful facts about his country, the animals, birds, etc. Anyone who has Eli as their personal guide is truly blessed. He is a gem!!!! We were able to see the "big 5" and had so many closeup opportunities with numerous species of wildlife. My son shot over 2,000 photos and 75 videos.
Our lodgings were very nice and the food was quite tasty. We were surprised that almost all of the food served was geared to American tastes. The Tanzanian people are very welcoming and always had lovely smiles.

We had a wonderful time on safari in Tanzania. Our guide Ely was an extremely knowledgable, courteous and safe driver. He has over 15 years experience providing safaris in Tanzania's national parks, and was an encyclopedia of knowledge about every animal and tree we encountered. He was also a good conversationalist which is important when you are spending 10 days together in a car!

The experience booking the trip with Peter was less positive and was below the standard of other agents we've used on KimKim:

- Two of the hotels selected were a 1.5 hour drive away from the parks, which meant longer trips in the car and less time spent in the parks. This seemed unnecessary since we had booked 6 months in advance of our trip and there were acceptable accommodations closer to the activity.
- A few of the hotels we had agreed to were changed without our knowledge. The substitutions were acceptable, but it would have been nice to know this in advance.
- Written communication was at times unclear making it difficult to understand the context behind why decisions were made and to assess whether everything was booked as requested.
- We were never reminded or given any guidance about the Visa application process.
- We twice setup a phone call and twice Peter did not show up for the call. Eventually we were able to connect.

Hotel Review

Arusha Coffee Lodge

Beautiful property, excellent service and food, and amazing coffee. Good starting location for your safari if you are arriving in JRO.

Authenticity & Character

Location

Staff

Cleanliness & Comfort

Activity Review

Masai boma experience

Serengeti National Park

Would not recommend this activity. Received a brief tour of the tribes home and culture, and then were guided to a large area of crafts made by their tribe. We felt obligated and pressured to buy something. No price was listed, and when we asked how much the items we selected would cost we were provided very high numbers (as compared to anywhere else). When we said we were not interested in purchasing, they several times pushed the items back into our hands and told us to negotiate. Also Google the Maasai people and learn about their treatment of women. Patriarchal society that treats women as property and performs female genital mutilation.

Quality of Experience

Guides, Drivers and Staff

This is our third trip with KimKim. I am very disappointed with some of the issues around how this trip was planned. It was very expensive and when I asked to about option for cost reduction such as staying in mid range hotels (as requested on our booking form) some changes were made but we still ended up staying in top end accommodation. Despite voicing concerns about cost we were not told it was 50% less to see the gorillas in Uganada (what most other groups staying at our lodge in Volcanos National Park had decided to do. We also had many issues with the way our itinerary was planned, zigzagging across the country which would mean far more time in the car than necessary. We discovered this mistake the day before we drove 11.5 hours when we expected to travel for 3.5 hours based on our itinerary (we could not do the planed stop or boat ride when we arrived at the location because it was dark, delays not do to road construction but just how long it takes to travel in this hilly country side. Another day was scheduled as 2 hours travel time, but this was actually 6. We were unable to do our night safari as we were not actually staying in Akagera National Park. Peter is based in Uganada and I feel it would be better to use someone based in Rwanada as the local Kimkim specialist. Driving around Rwanada is beautiful, but long road trips when you are not expecting them is hard, particularly when you are travelling with teenagers.

Our driver Khalif was excellent, with his other boss Agnes he managed to reorganize a part of our trip that meant we did not actually have to spend an extra 10 hours in the car travelling. He had not seen our itinerary until the day before he picked us up but was very aware it did not make sense. As we had booked our trip early October to travel in early June, paying our deposit in October it does not make sense why availability dates for gorilla trekking would be the barrier to having a sensible travel itinerary (instead of trying to Zig Zag across the coutry. Peter was unavailable to help as he was in the US, he never sent a follow up message to answer our specific questions seeking explanation or to apologize, despite know about our frustrations.

Hotel Reviews

Nyungwe Top View Hill Hotel

Did not stay here as this part of our trip had to be removed due to difficulties with our itinerary.

Da Vinci Gorilla Lodge

Musanze

Great lodge, heated with fireplaces and hot water bottles in the beds. Very comfortable. Beautiful scenery.

Authenticity & Character

Location

Staff

Cleanliness & Comfort

Mantis Kivu Marina Bay Hotel

rusizi

Expensive, resort like hotel, on hill. Lack character but very clean and comfortable.

Authenticity & Character

Location

Staff

Cleanliness & Comfort

Rutete Eco Lodge

This was a wonderful place to stay for three nights. Fantastic tour around the organic farm, wonderful food shared around a communal table with great conversations. Friendly and helpful staff. Juilianne is fantastic host and very knowledgeable about the local area and the country. Local female traditional drumming group visited one evening while we were there.

Authenticity & Character

Location

Outside the park therefor cannot to night safari. Instead consider behind the scenes tour as this was excellent.

Staff

Cleanliness & Comfort

Activity Reviews

Chimpanzee tracking in Nyungwe national park

Nyungwe

Disappointing. Based on adjustments made to our schedule so we didn't have to zig zag across the country it took us 3.5 hours to get to trekking starting point (not the main park centre), this meant we arrived to the start of our hike very late and did not really get to see chimpanzee - one dark blob in a tree across a very wide valley. The long drive also meant we spent three hours getting back to the park centre the canopy walk later in the day.

Nyungwe Forest Canopy Walk

Nyungwe

Fantastic views, great short hike.

Quality of Experience

Guides, Drivers and Staff

Transport

Buhanga Eco Park – Nature walk

Volcanoes National Park

Beautiful forest, easy walk, interesting history.

Volcanoes National Park Gorilla Trek

Volcanoes National Park

Wonderful experience! The hike was challenging but we really enjoyed it.

Quality of Experience

Guides, Drivers and Staff

Transport

Kigali City Tour and shopping

Kigali

Quality of Experience

Guides, Drivers and Staff

Transport

Cultural Village Visit

Volcanoes National Park

Quality of Experience

Guides, Drivers and Staff

Transport

Behind the scenes tour in Akagera National Park

Akagera

Great tour guide, fascinating to learn so much about the park and the relationship to Rwanada's history and the community development that is currently happening.

Quality of Experience

Guides, Drivers and Staff

Transport

Boat Ride in Akagera-Lake Ihema

Akagera

Quality of Experience

Guides, Drivers and Staff

Transport

Morning Game drive akagera National park

Akagera

Khalif is a knowledgeable guide. We saw so much wildlife and learned so much!

We thoroughly enjoyed our time in Uganda, Tanzania and Zanzibar. However, we would not recommend using Peter from Umoja African Journeys as we had too many issues on our trip to mention.

We had two outstanding guides on our trip. Moses in Uganda and Isaiah in Tanzania. They were fantastic taking the time to tell us about the country, animals, food, life in both countries. Isaiah is contracted from Watatu Tours in Arusha, Tanzania and would use him again.

When planning a trip to multiple countries, utilize an expert in that country as I would have used an expert in Tanzania and one in Uganda and Zanzibar. Find locals in that country.