Safari and diving holidays

Having taken a leap of faith and decided to book with Indigo Safaris for our diving on St Helena, it was one of the best decisions I have made. Christopher Bartlett is a low key operator who really knows his stuff. The booking process was very simple and painless.

St. Helena had been on my bucket list for quite a while, but I didn’t want to make a five day trip by ship to get there. When I found out they just built an airport, and they had diving, I had to go. Since I knew nothing about getting there and picking the right hotel, dive shop, tours, etc., I looked for a tour company that serviced the island. None of my usual sources did ( or had even heard of it). I found Indigo Safaris on the internet, but was reluctant to try a firm I had never heard of. When I started emailing them, Christopher Bartlett began answering my questions, and I had plenty. It didn’t take days to get a response; he answered right away. I found out that he had been there, had met all the people and had been to all the places there. Plus, when I heard Christopher was a fellow diver, this convinced me to use Indigo Safaris, and I am glad I did.
I told him my budget, how many dives I wanted to do, the types of activities I liked, etc. He quickly came back with an itinerary made for me, and explained why he picked what he picked. He made suggestions that would help me keep the price down - that part I especially liked. After fine tuning it, I was set to go. He even made paying easy, told me the options for paying that would save me money, and let me pay in installments.
I loved the hotel he suggested, The Consulate (rather than the new modern, expensive one). It was built in the seventeen hundreds, but had been updated. It was almost a museum of Napoleon relics and pictures and period furniture. It was absolutely unique. Hazel, the owner, and her staff did everything to make my stay absolutely pleasant. They answered or sought the answers for whatever I needed or wanted to do. Although I visited St Helena for only one week, Hazel even hugged me and cried when I left for home.
Although there were several tour guides on the island, the one Christopher suggested for my all day tour, Aaron’s Adventures, was great. Aaron knew everything about everything. He never rushed us. I doubt if we missed even a single road on the entire small island. He was very personable.
My diving was done with Anthony. I’m 80 years old, so I needed a divemaster who would look out for me and give me confidence. Anthony was that person. He tailored the dives for my abilities and was my dive partner. I couldn’t have asked for more. He was Christopher’s representative on the island who drove me to and from the airport. He also took me on a boating adventure to see the dolphins (We saw a school of about 300).
Some time to do my own thing was built into the trip, which I used to tour the historic spots ( the Governor of the territory gave me a tour of the Governor’s mansion), I climbed the highest peak (Diana’s Peak), and I climbed Jacob’s Ladder’s 699 steps in 21 minutes,
I’m glad I took Christopher’s advice, because I had a wonderful, unique trip. I look forward to using Indigo again on my next trip to Africa, which I hope will be this coming June. I would not hesitate the least bit to recommend Indigo to anyone.

My husband and I travelled to South Africa recently and was looking for someone with hands on experience to help with organising/booking our trip. We came across Indigo Safaris and specifically dealt with Ines who was amazing. They run a very professional efficient business, replying within 24 hrs (even though we are in Australia and they Seychelles). All our bookings etc were fantastic and very much to our liking everything ran very smoothly and would not hesitate in using Indigo Safaris (Ines) again and highly recommend anyone else to use them.

This was my 3rd experience with Indigo, and I will happily use them again as well as recommend them to others. Because of Ines's direct experience with all of the activities and providers they arrange, she is able to listen actively to the traveler's goals and needs and thereby prepare an itinerary which responds to the traveler's goals and needs in a direct way. Ines was always responsive to my questions and changing needs. They are also well-versed in helping travelers prepare to navigate the ever-changing requirements for visas, vaccinations, as well as provide perspective on the culture(s) of the destinations. Have used Ines for 2 group safari trips with 12 travelers each and a multi-country tour of southern Africa for just 2 of us. Each experience has been wonderful with any special needs handled exceptionally well. Use them!

We stayed for 3 days and 2 nights in Chobe National Park, camping there. It was an amazing experience, and we got very lucky that the first day was super hot, so many different animals were going to the river to get some water and refreshment, like elephants, buffalos, hippos, lions and the rare wild dogs. I'd like to highlight the excellent work of Richard (or Kamwi, his African name), the guide who took us on our first boat tour and did an amazing job, showing us a lot of animals very close, giving a lot of interesting informations about them and interacting with everyone in the boat; Kamboo, the guide who took us for the 3 days on the safari, was also very committed on finding many different animals and explaining about them, answering a lot of questions. The food we had at the safari was excellent as well. However, I have to point out 3 things that dropped the rate of this unique experience:
1) The last boat tour we did was a disaster! The guide from Kalahari tours (Tanya) was afraid of getting slightly close to the animals, especially hippos. She stopped the boat waiting a bigger one to cross an area where there were a few hippos nearby, but right after that she had issues with the engine. After around 1 very tense hour in the middle of hippos, crocodiles and elephants with the engine not working and not being able to ask for help, she managed to get it to work again and we headed back from a very short and tense tour. Nobody asked us details, no compensation was made and Tanya didn't even apologize to us. By the way, when we got back from the tour she asked my friend to tie the boat to the pier, since nobody was there to do it. Unfortunately he lost his sunglasses doing that.
2) The camping didn't have any electric fences as was stated in the trip description. It was very cool camping into the wild, but it wasn't according to the stated.
3) We were not notified that a company called Kalahari Tours would do the tour for us. A guy came just knowing that he had to pick 5 people and the surname of my friend was written wrong, making us confuse at first.

The help we received in planning and adapting our trip to Botswana was first rate. Ines worked really to make sure we got to do exactly what we wanted to every step of the way. She showed excellent local knowledge and nothing was too much trouble. She even made adjustments to the start of the trip when we were stuck in Johannesburg due to a missed flight connection.

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