Your calls always answered within 5 rings.
Another fabulous safari organised by Stacey. She really is an African expert!
First class service from start to finish.
Service was great. We will definitely use again
What an exceptional service. I have shared my experience and promoted your brand to everyone I know because of my personal experience! Outstanding!
Absolutely fantastic service
Keep up the good work
There was a delay of one hour in Amsterdam but that had nothing to do with yourselves.
Excellent service from Robbie as always
Leah is always a great help when we are planning a trip, she comes up with great options for two ladies travelling from different ends of the UK.
It was all done for me. 1st class.
I have been using Alex Gache for years - he is incredible. Consistently delivering high class service - I wouldn’t trust anyone else with my bookings! I always recommend him and hope he gets the recognition he deserves!
Dealing with Edward is a pleasure.
Perfect for me
Thanks for arranging this, Tony!
Thanks Matt - great job
Bradley excellent to deal with, only issue was my car hire cost but not a DialAFlight fault. Look forward to next time..
All very efficient and friendly, will use you again
All went extremely well
Ryan always helpful - use DialAFlight all the time
Doug, you're simply the best. All went to plan.
Matthew is always brilliant. We have recommended him to so many. We feel absolutely supported on our travels and wonder why anyone makes their own bookings when they could benefit from the support given by DialAFlight
Great planning and attention to detail. Thanks again Billy
The holiday was perfect in every way and the service from you was superb. FYI flying economy class with British Airways was poor and I would never fly with BA again.
Emirates flights are a bit long to get to South Africa via Dubai, but very clean, comfortable and reliably on time! TIP 1: I booked a "Low Fat Meal" and got served long before anyone else, which gave me more time to cover my eyes and sleep during the flight! TIP 2: I booked aisle seat on the inner seating so as to have just 1 person disturb my sleep during the flight. Luck had it that I have nobody seated next to me on any of the 4 flights!
Everything went smoothly - Freddie did a great job and kept in touch with any updates.
Ashley is our go to guy and never fails to impress!
Everything was as expected. Tony always does a good job. I would not recommend the hotel in Harare as it was not up to a five star standard
I had a bad experience, as I was sitting by the front row and all of a sudden someone comes with his mat and laid it there and started praying, something that was uncomfortable to watch. As people we all have religions and cultural practices but sure we can not go public about it.
My first flight was cancelled but Rupert quickly arranged different flights which got me to my final destination on time
Natasha Hawkins was first class sorting everything out for our fantastic holiday. Thank you so much. Highly recommend you
A log fire is casting soft shadows across cocktail hour and I can hear the chink-chunk of my sons playing a gentlemanly game of billiards. Next door, an elegant dining room is being laid by candlelight, just for the four of us.
Later, in the library, there'll be time to dip into The Southern African Household Guide, which is like Mrs Beeton but with added emergency bush medicine.
Staying at Mantis Founders Lodge, an hour-and-a-half from Gqeberha (formerly Port Elizabeth) on South Africa's Eastern Cape, is like being in the country house of grand but kindly relatives, not least because this was, until recently, a private home. Built in the 1940s for the godfather of South African conservation, Adrian Gardiner, it's now a seven-suite hotel with rhinos at the end of the garden.
The library was originally Mr Gardiner's office, where he created the pioneering private game reserve Shamwari (beloved of Brad Pitt and King Charles).
He doesn't live here any more but still phones at 8pm most nights to ask after his guests. Founders is about as personal as a safari gets.
Bump down a track for a few minutes and you'll find the private railway carriage in which earlier generations of Gardiners once criss-crossed southern Africa. The glorious exterior livery has been flawlessly restored while inside there's enough burnished brass and velvet drapes to keep the Dowager Countess of Grantham happy.
Before we move into the main Lodge, (it's ours for one night), with dinner by chef Lloyd and served on the deck by butler Bongiwe, Ranger Sikhumbuzo has got a fire blazing and around us and the sound of animals is turned up to the max.
Founders is how Mr Gardiner continued to build sustainable tourism after his Shamwari years - rewilding exhausted farmland, reintroducing the Big Five - rhinos, elephants, lions, leopards and buffalo - and the smaller creatures with which they cohabit: the red-billed oxpeckers that pick out their ticks, for instance, as well as dung beetles to fertilise the orange earth.
His ambitious eco-project is the antithesis of a 'Ferrari Safari' - ticking off animals at high speed. At Founders you can watch a pride of lionesses take down a warthog or a dozen orange-eyed hippos singing in their mud bath.
But you'll stop for the marigold flash of a Cape Daisy, too, the distant flap of a martial eagle's wings or to inhale the super-stink of a patrolling hyena. It's such an intimate place that only the leopards prove more elusive than the sight of other tourists.
Founders is also an outpost of Bear Grylls's empire, offering a survival masterclass for young guests. Parents are supposed to disappear but, like the nosy giraffe watching on, my husband and I, and our eldest son, 16, were far too interested in what our 12-year-old was doing.
Stuck in the South African bush?
Lash up a shelter with rope made from the bark of an acacia tree.
Later we use some of the acacia bark rope to make bracelets, with happy memories woven in.
We return to Gqeberha, a historic, sunny city that is well served by short flights from Johannesburg an hour-and-a-half away.
Here you can book-end your safari with whale and penguin watching, surfing and sailing out of the Lodge's sister hotel Mantis No 5. It's a white and blue Miami-lookalike just 100 metres from Gqeberha's Indian Ocean beach. No 5 has one of the city's best restaurants, The Jazz Room, a private cinema modelled on the one in Clarence House and 200 pieces of art, many from Mr Gardiner's collection.
But amid the city's urban cool we have only to glance at our bracelets to feel the tug of the immersive natural world of Founders - and what a privilege it has been to experience it.
First published in the Mail on Sunday - February 2024
More articles below...
Not quite what you're looking for?
We can easily customise an offer to suit your exact requirements