Reviews

Jonty is the best. My husband and I are traveling in Southern Africa for 6 weeks and debated overland trips (easy, cheap) vs a build your own adventure. We decided on the build your own because we wanted more time in certain spots. I then worked with a few traditional travel agents and did not mesh with them—they didn’t ask questions and assumed they knew what we wanted in a trip, leading to a lot of wasted effort on their part and a lot of lost time for us when we could have been planning the trip we wanted instead of waiting for them to get back to us. Enter Timbuktu: I found the site when googling generally for canoe trips down the Zambezi. I’m a techie from San Francisco, so finding a website and service dedicated to my specific problem/goal was heaven! It makes the planning process much more transparent and way less confusing/stressful. I immediately transferred my spreadsheet itinerary into their site and submitted for advice. Within 24hrs I was on the phone with Jonty and he went through the 6 week itinerary with me, offering advice and suggestions. He’s a local and clearly loves traveling. Through this 20 min phone call he demonstrated his expertise and also his understanding of what I was looking for. He improved all of our plans, but focused himself on the parts I was stumped on, mainly transfers and how to link together a Zambezi canoe trip + Victoria falls + Chobe + Okavango + getting to Namibia to start a self-drive tour. Within the week we had an itinerary that I loved and Jonty and I worked through minor changes to get it to be perfect. He’s always prompt to answer questions or give status updates if it’s taking time to get details or confirmations from other sources. I appreciate the professionalism, expertise, enthusiasm, and kindness with which Jonty conducts his job. And I 100% recommend working with him and Timbuktu overall. I now just wish I could use for planning all my trips, not just African safaris :)

We had Timbuktu help us plan a fairly short notice trip to Namibia. Katie was quick to put together an excellent tour and ready to provide a timely response to our questions.

Timbuktu are absolutely brilliant. This was our first experience with them and in our opinion, there is nothing they can do to improve the brilliant service they offer. Our agent Jonty, was with us all the way through our holiday in Africa, checking in at each destination to make sure we’d arrived safely and that all was OK. One of the airlines we had booked with, pulled out of South Africa during our holiday which was a bit stressful as we had to organised flights with another airline. Jonty sorted everything for us which took the stress out of it. We would highly recommend Timbuktu and will definitely be using them again.

We have a perfect trip to South Africa and Zimbabwe thanks to Timbuktu. Our agent Katherine is really responsive to our needs and our requests, she also keeps our cost reasonable! We were there for our 25th anniversary and back to where we met, and we had very good time in South Africa! The most important thing is we know we are going to be safe and all the lodges suggested are better than expectations.

... as always. Jonty went out of his way to put together our South Africa and Benguerra dream vacation. Our last minute request was nearly impossible, he made it possible. So looking forward to another amazing trip to Africa, thank you Timbuktu!

I would certainly recommend them. After giving them a few ideas of where we would like to go a wonderful holiday has been organised for us. We can’t wait to go.

Excellent! Jonty is a knowledgeable, efficient and supportive agent who tries to respond to all my questions and accommodate our needs and requests.

Very responsive to questions and always available even during outside of working hours well on Safari in Madagascar. Generally strong local partner who procured two excellent guides/drivers for the majority of our trip.

Highly recommended. The perfect way to focus on what matters (enjoying your trip)!

Katie was a great help while booking my trip. She had great advice and took the time to understand my needs. I'm excited for my upcoming safari!