threepointkid

I have an ambitious trip in mind for the summer of 2026 and I want to just get a bit of feedback on each of the stops along the way from anyone who has visited any of these places. The logistics work out nicely between each place with commercial flights connecting all 3 countries.

The itinerary/properties I have my eyes on currently are:

4 nights Tswalu

1 night overnight in Kigali

3 nights Amakoro Songa Lodge

4 nights Kilindi

Seeing Mountain Gorillas and Golden Monkeys had remained on my list and so has Tswalu. I discussed a full Rwanda itinerary with our travel agent which included Magashi, but my thinking is we can visit two places we’ve really wanted to go to on one trip without the logistics seeming too crazy, since we can catch commercial flights between all of the locations. My wife wants to visit Zanzibar, so while talking the trip through, I thought, sure why not. Would love to do andBeyond Mnemba, but I think Kilindi looks great at about 1/4 of the price.

Any suggestions/feedback are welcome! Thank you in advance for responses!

flying_blue_white_red

That Amakoro Songa Lodge looks truly outstanding. Strange that I've never heard/read about this such gem before your post .
I can only encourage you to stay there and write/record a review .

threepointkid

Thank you for the encouragement! I will certainly do so if I end up visiting! It seems like a lovely boutique property at a fraction of the cost of Singita and Bisate!

LAX_Esq

My $0.02... I know this is FlyerTalk and fancy hotels are a priority to many here, but I'd focus on the wildlife first and foremost and then figure out the lodges based on that. Game viewing is very season-dependent for African safaris, so keep that in mind. Also, I see a lot of people trying to jam in a trip combining both Southern and East Africa, and I think it makes sense to focus on one or the other. What's the point of doing a safari in SA if you're wanting to see the mountain gorillas and do R&R in Zanzibar? Tanzania/Kenya has the Serengeti (Masai Mara) ecosystem / migration, which is arguably the best game viewing in Africa, so I'm not sure why you wouldn't just stick to East Africa. Again, just my two cents...

threepointkid

I apologize! I will post the regions instead of the specific accommodations if I do a tentative itinerary like this again. The reason why I’m specifically focused on SA is because I will have already visited the Sabi Sands twice and. Had it in mind to pair it with Tswalu for the more elusive species that are much harder to see in the more popular safari destinations on a future trip. I also have always had Rwanda on my list. Since it’s such a long trip over and I can realistically only visit Africa once every two years and I realized it’s only a 3.5 hour flight from JNB to KIG, I thought, well why combine Rwanda and Tswalu for two very different experiences from what I’ve already seen. East Africa is most certainly a trip I want to do in the future, but I hope to give Kenya and Tanzania the 2+ weeks it deserves. Thank you very much for your feedback.

cheltzel

+1

Especially the point about skipping South Africa if your main interest is seeing the gorillas. And there are several good lodges/camps in the Masai Mara as well as the Serengeti.

I have not visited the Tswalu reserve. But my wife and I have had several discussions with online friends who visits south Africa with a lot more frequency than most here. My impression is the Kalahari reserves have desert animals (like the meerkat) that you can't get anywhere else. But it is our impression the the overall species in that area is more limited than the Kruger Park area.

We have found that the Sabi Sands private reserves have flat out the best game viewing in our experience. And if you are looking to stay at one of the Tswalu camps (Loapi. Motse, etc), you are paying more than you would pay Londolozi or MalaMala Rattrays (including a private vehicle). We have stayed at both. Both offer a very high level of quality (room, food, beverage etc) and the wildlife viewing at both is simply overwhelming (it should be as their reserves shar something like a 12km border). In our first four days at Londolozi this past July we saw multiple leopards (including mothers with cubs/newborns), several cheetahs, two major lion prides, two smaller independent lion groups (coalitions being formed), multiple elephant herds, several groups of giraffes (herd/tower/journey of giraffes ??), this included a mother who had just given birth to a baby, multiple sightings of rhinos (with children), too many hippos to count, multiple crocs, two different wild dog packs, just about every prey species native to the Kruger Park area (all the antelopes, buffalo, etc), warthog, honey badger, hyena. And I am quite sure I am forgetting many more.

threepointkid

Thank you for the excellent suggestions. I have been to Londolozi in 2022 and I will be back there this summer as well, so I have experienced what the Sabi Sands has to offer. I will always be drawn back to return and will hopefully do so in future years, but as I mentioned above in the thread, I have had my eyes on both Rwanda and Tswalu for separate trips, but my thought process was to combine these two trips into one given there is a direct flight between the countries. I like the idea of the chance of being able to see aardvark, pangolin, brown hyena, aardwolf, bat eared fox, etc. that I wouldn’t be able to see in other locations and that I haven’t seen before.

cheltzel

I hope you get to see what you are looking for in the Kalahari!! We spend several days last year in the Lower Zambezi NP in Zambia for a similar reason. Doing a game viewing excursion on the river and it's side channels was very interesting and enlightening.

threepointkid

Thank you! That is an area I would also like to visit on a future trip. I appreciate your thoughtful and relevant input!

DaveS

Good luck with your trip. I am in Rwanda at the moment. The only advice I would give is to make sure you have some time in your schedule to cope with delayed/ cancelled flights. You do not have much time in each location, it would be a shame to miss what you want to see because of a fight problem or broken down vehicle.

jiaotze

This may not be a popular opinion, but I don't see anything wrong with the op's plan to split the trip between the two regions. We do it all the time. For me, I figure by the time that I navigate an airport and get on a plane, whether I'm on a flight for an hour or for four hours really makes no difference.

We aren't travelers who need to see a specific country in super detail, but rather we go to places to see what we want to see, following which we split. We love going on safari to East Africa and then heading to CPT or elsewhere in S Africa on the same trip.

Just a few months ago, we went from Djibouti to Rwanda to Kenya to South Africa over a 3-week period. As long as one does careful planning with flights, it can work out just fine. Of course flights can get mucked up, but for me that's not reason enough to avoid someplace I really want to visit on a specific trip. Different strokes for different folks.

FWIW, we enjoyed Rwanda, but for us it wasn't the life-changing experience that some seem to have.

cheltzel

I agree with you on the relative closeness of locations. If your desire is to visit the Rift Valley and then off to Cape Town and the wine country of the Western Cape, by all means go for it. I just responded to make sure the OP knew there were traditional land safari lodges/camps much closer to Rwanda and that there were some extremely high value camps in the OPs price range in the private reserves adjacent to the Kruger. The OPs response made it obvious that the OP was knowledgeable and was looking for sights/experiences best done at a location like the Tswalu reserve. But going longer distances and doing multiple camps/locations in a relatively short time can cost a fair amount of your budget in both time and money. Personally, I prefer to keep the locations relatively close to the point where transferring between them is convenient enough that we spend 80% - 90% (or more) of our time at the locations we wish to visit. As always, YMMV.

threepointkid

Thank you again for your input. I think what I was not clear enough about was that I have already experienced a more traditional safari setting once at RockFig in the Timbavati and Londolozi in the Sabi Sands. Next summer I will be visiting Silvan and Londolozi in the Sabi Sands, so the purpose of Tswalu is to go after a different landscape and different set of animals. It just so happens to be in SA. Magashi in Rwanda is intriguing, but really the uniqueness of Tswalu is what wants me to pair it up with Rwanda, rather than doing say Tswalu + somewhere else in SA in 2026 and then waiting another year or two to do Rwanda. I think based on what I've read in the thread above that there are mixed feelings on the pairing of destinations requiring commercial flights and there certainly is the risk of missing a flight or experiencing delays, but to experience two spectacular destinations like this, I think that I am willing to bite that bullet to be able to do so. I appreciate everyone's feedback!

cheltzel

We're going to the Rift Valley next year to visit multiple camps in both Kenya and Tanzania. Staying close to 3 weeks. There is one part I am worried about. We will need to fly two different small shared charter aircraft. One from the Mara North Conservancy to the Kenya/Tanzania border and then manually get all our stuff across the border, clearing immigration and customs at the same time, and then take a second small shared charter flight to an airstrip in the SE corner of the Serengeti. I like to over plan everything when it comes to flights and I don't have the highest opinion of the really small airlines/charter operations. We've been burned by aircraft suspiciously hours late. Never a now-show, but that is my nightmare scenario.

But it will end up being 17 days in camps all over both the Mara and the Serengeti. Hopefully spectacular days/nights.