Reviews

Jonty did a great job helping us create an excellent vacation. He provided local expertise and worked hard to get us the best rates at our dream locations. His efforts were much appreciated!

This is our second time using Timbuktu for a trip to Africa. Just like our first experience, everything about this trip was flawless. Timbuktu has a lifetime customer in us, and we're already starting to think about our next adventure!

I had a great time communicating with Catherine. She was incredibly knowledgable and helped me edit my trip until it was perfect. She gave me lots of honest feedback and did a fantastic job curating an epic honeymoon. She has been incredibly informative regarding additional travel information in general as well!

Katie flawlessly planned an itinerary across four countries, including at least a dozen transfers and four COVID tests. All I had to do was show up. Best and most relaxing vacation ever.

Joanna Rigby-Jones did a wonderful job booking the trip of a life time for my daughter and I. Frankly, we couldn’t have done it without her. When Covid entered the picture she was able to accommodate an 18 month delay without any substantial changes in cost. Can’t say enough on how great a job she did.

The service so far has been outstanding. Catherine spent much time understanding our travel style, our previous Africa travel, and what we were looking for in another trip. We started with one area in mind and ended up with something quite different, and I think much much better. I really appreciated her frank feedback. She also got us some great discounts. She has been super responsive and thorough throughout our planning process. It has been a pleasure so far and we can't wait for our April trip.

Our level of service and patience from Joanna was outstanding. She stuck with us for 2 years over the pandemic and answered all our questions.

This review isn't about our trip (spoiler, it was AWESOME, go if you haven't been or go again if you have), but specifically about booking with Timbuktu. This was our first trip to Africa so we were ignorant to the different regions and what they had to offer outside of what Google could tell us. We gave our wish list to our travel agent, Katie, and ****!, she created an awesome itinerary. Then we had to change our dates, and with another ****! she updated our itinerary to fit the new dates. She was in communication with us in the weeks leading up to the trip to make sure everything was in order so we arrived/exited without any issues. We really appreciated the communication and she was always available for questions. We are typically independent travelers who like to put together our own trips but we could not have done this without Katie's help - she had the knowledge of the camps and places we should go to best enjoy our bucket list trip, while giving consideration to our trip duration and budget. The local partner that Timbuktu interfaces with in Kenya was awesome... they were professional, friendly, and SO knowledgeable - our guide really made the trip. We'll be back to book with Timbuktu for our next adventure. I enjoyed building itineraries on the website. This feature made it easy to share or review an itinerary with family members, and then send it to an agent for refining. With regards to pricing, package pricing is comparable to other agencies but can be better tailored to your budget when you build your own itinerary. The representation of camps on the site was accurate. Thanks so much to Katie and the Timbuktu team!

I used Timbuktu for a recent trip with my daughter to Botswana and Zimbabwe. Katie was fantastic in helping me plan and answering questions about specifics on locations to select and camps to stay in. All flights between camps were problem free and arrangements for COVID testing was seamless. I have already planned a trip for next year with them to Kenya. I can recommend them any higher to anyone considering a safari.

I can not say enough great things about this company and our advisor Tessa. I was blown away by the incredible customer service. I thought it would be challenging rescheduling our trip due to Covid and Tessa made it a breeze. She made amazing recommendations and was always available. She helped until the end planning the best trip we have ever taken. Everything was so seamless and easy. They literally did everything perfect and we had the most easiest, flawless travel experience. We met another couple at one of our lodges that used Timbuktu and had the same experience. We have used other travel agents in the past, but Tessa at Timbuktu is by far the best. We will use her again for all of our Africa travels. The grounds team that they use in Africa is also the best! We were not only greeted us at every stop, but had the best guides we have ever had, and we saw more animals than we could have imagined. They even planned all of our Covid test which I was worried about since we went to 2 different countries, but we had no issues. They even had someone meet us at the airport on the airstrip to give us an envelope that contained our confirmation of a negative test. They seriously thought of everything! All of the lodges were top notch and even better than expected. They got us upgraded at 2 of our lodges and it was such a nice surprise. The grounds team even did everything for us like checking us into our flights, handling our luggage, and taking care of the paperwork at the small landing strips and we just sat back and relaxed and enjoyed our amazing trip. It was the least stressful traveling I have ever done. This was a trip of a lifetime and we couldn't be happier with the entire experience.