Question: Last minute safaris
Hey all,
My wife and I were considering a safari, but due to personal circumstances, rather than doing it next year, all carefully planned and such, we got to wondering - could we do it last minute? We'd be going from the UK. We were thinking Tanzania and ending in Zanzibar for a quick bit, but could consider other options of course. And neither of us have safari'd before.
Obviously we know that a lot of stuff goes out the window on last minute ones, like decent lodge availability, and even good guide availability, as well as prices of things like flights being more expensive.
But with the fact that some people might drop out and not be able to make room on an organised package, we wonder if that might be do-able? We wouldn't really have time to do sufficient vetting of smaller places, I'd imagine, so may have to be on a slightly pricier and less varied one though like Trailfinders, Kuoni, Intrepid, etc.
Anyone had any experience with last minute safaris organised by a third party? Do they tend to do 'drop out' deals? I'm going to start calling them ASAP but just wanted to see if anyone had made any guides or good threads, or otherwise know which ones may be better, if this is even possible, etc. Ideal situation would be where there's a fully planned safari ready to go for a couple, they drop out, and we 'drop in' but that is a bit of a pipe dream, I get it!
We'd be looking at September or October this year. And like I say, if it's with someone who's too small, we may get a better experience but I'd also be worried we'd have to skip too many vetting steps, and I would rather we don't get scammed or left strander haha, so willing to pay for a bit of 'peace of mind' there potentially (within reason - we're not made of money and want to do it as cheaply as we reasonably and safely can - but recognise that if we're doing it, we don't want to cheap out too hard and ruin something we should have just paid 20-50% (or whatever) more for.
Thanks all.