Umzantsi Afrika Tours

We took the 3 Day Garden Route Private and Exclusive Tour with Umzantsi Afrika Tours and are so happy we did! The night we arrived in Port Elizabeth, Lyn, the owner, picked us up at the airport and drove us to the B&B she selected for us. It was a lovely place, as were all the other B&Bs on this trip. Besides setting up this tour, she also offered and made arrangements for excursions and hotels in St. Lucija, which we really appreciated. The next morning we were greeted by our wonderful tour guide and companion for the next three days, Deon. Not only is he a trained and knowledgeable guide, but his personal interest in history brings so much more to the trip. Deon took care of everything and made sure that we were comfortable, happy, and relaxed, and that our time was used efficiently so we got the most out of the three days. He is also very personable and fun and made this a memorable experience for us. We were sorry to see him leave when our tour ended! We highly recommend both this tour company and our tour guide.

I loved my three day trip. Despite the tension sometimes beforehand, the trip went so well. You husband adapted well to my choices. If he wasn't into something, he would find someone to talk with and enjoy himself. I was sad when it ended. I wanted to see so many places out there in that area of South Africa.

We were collected on time from the port and did the half day city tour with Alex who was a mine of information. He had a very open mind and talked freely about the problems and positive aspects of life. Unfortunately, my wife was unwell but he returned her to the ship without fuss and we continued the tour visiting all the scheduled itinerary and more. I was then returned to the ship in good time. It was a real pleasure to travel with Alex.

Wonderful!!! Flexible, customizable, and comfortable. Guide was knowledgeable, supportive, and easy to be with. Took care of all logistics, which allowed us to fully relax and take in our experiences without worrying about logistics. Booked us amazing accommodations, had great restaurant recommendations locally, and was able to incorporate all our desired highlights and some unexpected treats along the way! Highly recommend Umzantsi.

Staff were amazing friendly and helpful all the way. Very informative on travel packages. Can recommend them anytime!!

Very Knowledgeable and informative. Definitely recommend this tour company.

The guides are professional and friendly. Smooth process when booking a tour. The team will go out they way to make your holiday the best one yet. I highly recommend Umzantsi Afrika Tours for your next getaway.

I have just had my first tour done by Lyn Haller from Umzantsi Afrika Tours and I am so in awe of her knowledge, professionalism and all round respect she has for the industry. Her love for the industry is so clear and can be felt by everyone around her. Making us feel so welcome and all information she shared with us thru the years of guiding made this one of the best trips I have had to date. Thank you to everyone involved in planning our tour. Was a great experience and highly recommend.

Our tour to Addo Elephant Park with Umzantzi Afrika Tours was excellent! Our guide, Peter Haller, was knowledgeable and enthusiastic, sharing interesting facts and insights about Park. The tour was well-organized, and we appreciated the opportunity to spend this time out of the City in nature. We highly recommend Umzantzi Afrika Tours to anyone visiting Gqeberha. Thank you!

I wanted to take a moment to sincerely thank you for all your effort in assisting us with this trip. We had such an incredible time, and it’s been the main topic of conversation in our family ever since we returned. Each day was uniquely special, and the memories we created will be cherished for years to come. If we find ourselves planning another visit to the Eastern Cape in the future, you can be sure we’ll reach out to you again. Your seamless arrangements made this trip enjoyable and stress-free. We’re incredibly grateful. Kind Regards

We had a fabulous holiday in and around the Cape. We spent 4 days in Cape town and stayed at the Table Bay hotel. A very large and busy hotel, excellent facilities and excellent location as we could enjoy the waterfront easily Highlights were visiting Robben Island, climbing Lion;s head, Kirstenbosch Botanical Gardens, half day tour of the peninsula, and of course visit to Table Mountain. (Note it is closed for 2 weeks a the end of July, beginning of August). Then we went on the Garden Route organised though Umzantsi Tours. We started our tour in Port Elizabeth and took the route to back to Cape Town. Our Guide, Peter Haller was fantastic and we had a great time visiting some lovely places and stunning scenery along the route, and included visiting Tsitsikamma National Park, Knysna, Oudtshoorn,and Stellenbosch. One thing we would have changed was to start the tour straight away on arriving in Port Elizabeth, rather than stay a night there, as we could then add another day/night elsewhere. Very memorable and enjoyable trip to the Cape.

I was travelling with my adult son, who has a keen interest in politics and history. In between the end of the Garden Route tour and flying to Durban, we had an afternoon to kill, so arranged for Lyn to give us a half-day tour of Port Elizabeth. She promptly met us at our hotel in a well-maintained, comfortable vehicle. Lyn knows and loves Port Elizabeth. With her, you will learn lots about this historical city. We saw the South End Museum, which was really informative, and drove around the oldest areas of the city. But the icing on the cake was that after the end of the tour, Lyn arranged for us to meet a local politician. This proved to be one of the most engaging and interesting experiences of our 3 weeks in South Africa. By the end of the day, we were wishing we had planned to spend more time in Port Elizabeth.

Our 3 and a bit week road trip was Cape Town, Franschoek, Garden Route, Karoo, Paarl and back to CT. I worked closely with Lyn planning the route, stops and accommodation and her communication was excellent. We were in regular contact regarding changes, tweaks to the itinerary and she had some excellent suggestions for alternative destinations. The result was that all 8 of our group had a fantastic time and Lyn managed to get a great balance between short and longer stays in various places. Even when we had a minor couple of hiccups during the trip, Lyn was on to it immediately and had any issues sorted very quickly - great response. The minibus was in very good condition, comfortable and reliable - all you need for a successful trip. I would recommend Lyn if you want a great SA trip.

We booked a 5 day tour from Port Elizabeth to Cape Town along the Garden Route with Uzmanti. We loved the tour. We stayed at lovely properties in various locations along the route and really enjoyed the experiences especially in the smaller B&B locations. Our driver was fun, flexible and very helpful. Lyn and Tanielle who worked the arrangements for us were great to deal with and it was lovely to meet Tanielle when we first started our tour in Port Elizabeth, I would highly recommend this small local tour company for booking garden route tours or shore excursions while visiting SA on cruises. They also set up some excellent tours for us in Johannesburg. I will certainly utilize their services again if we return to South Africa.

Our guide was Deon was great and extremely knowledgable and took good care of us. He also went out of his way to take us into Knysna as there was no restaurant at the park (Well it closes at 5.30pm) and took us all around the town and showed us some great photo spots in the hills. I would recommend using this company and booking your holiday tours. My only small negative (was oddly enough is also a positive) was I didn't realise we would have a lot of spare time to choose additional activities this is great to do more things but maybe would have liked spending more time in Addo and more time in the Elephant Park (at night for example) as we didn't get to spend much time at either (even though we stayed the night). So that you can pre research what options there are and what you want to do. But in saying this we got to see a lot more than we thought A great experience and one I would highly recommend to anyone only have a small amount of time to cram in a lot on the eastern cape from Port Elizabeth and an absolute MUST for any Elephant lover.

I loved my three day trip. Despite the tension sometimes beforehand, the trip went so well. You husband adapted well to my choices. If he wasn't into something, he would find someone to talk with and enjoy himself. I was sad when it ended. I wanted to see so many places out there in that area of South Africa. Thank you.

We would like to thank you for such a well organised tour, everything went really smoothly and the accommodation was excellent. We were delighted with the wine tour and Game Park with the activities provided, although we hadn’t noticed the change from Botlierscop to Buffelsdrift until the night before, it was therefore a longer drive than anticipated but well worth it. Our tour guide was polite and had a reasonable general knowledge of the history of the area. Our ride was much more comfortable after we had given him some driving tuition as well! It was his first time leading this type of tour and we considered him lucky to have had us! Thanks again for your fantastic organisation.

I hope you are all okay, and I wanted to say a huge huge thanks to Peter for being such a wonderful guide on our trip. We had a really enjoyable time and lots of laughs and enjoyed Peter's company and endless stories. The kids especially had a great time. We visited some really gorgeous places on our route , had great weather and even now I can't believe our son did that bungee jump!! won't forget that, that's for sure. We managed to do so many lovely things, including climbing Lion's head, walking in the Botanical garden, seeing the beautiful coastline and mountain views, Tssitsikama, drive to Franshhoek and even the weather was kind to us on our last day in Cape as we got to see the stunning Table Mountain as it was closed on the previous 2 days due to high winds. I hope your trip on the vintage train was also amazing and you both had a great time in the northern part of the country. Anyway our very best wishes to you, Peter, Thuli for all your help and making it such a lovely family holiday. We are very grateful to Peter for driving us everywhere and making us feel so at home and comfortable and sharing with us all his amazing knowledge and great humour. Best wishes and take care, Rekha, Palvesh, Anoushka and Roshan

Dear Lynn, we sensed that you love the park and its animals which made communciations easy. You were kind from your heart, responsive, knowledgeable. We learned a lot about Addo from you and enjoyed every minute of it. Thank you also for your safe driving in a perfectly comfortable car in which relaxation was complete (apart from being central Austrian Standard clean!).

My husband and I traveled all over South Africa last month. For the first leg of our trip we hired Umzantsi Africa to personally drive us all over Cape Town, Stellenbosch and finally Oudtshoorn. Peter was our driver; he picked us up from the airport, took us to dinner, and gave us a tour of each town. Peter knows everything about everything. We spent many hours driving around with him and learned so much about the history of S. Africa including its geological history dating back 100s of millions of years. He knew great restaurants too. Our first night we went to the most amazing African restaurant with live music and dancing. Peter was an absolute joy to be around. The company made our dinner reservations, booked our hotels and organized our itinerary. At the last minute they found us an even better hotel in Stellenbosch and it was well worth the switch. Literally one of the most beautiful hotels I have ever stayed in. Thanks to them, my husband and I had some of our most memorable experiences in South Africa. – E Collins

We live in Europe but decided to visit S.A. for our honeymoon so I could introduce my wife to the country I grew up in. We booked 3 safari day tours in the Kruger National Park through Umzantsi travel as well as a full day combo tour of Cape point and the wine lands in Cape Town. We also did a hop on hop off in the city of Cape Town. All drivers were very friendly, punctual and very helpful with anything we requested. They picked us up at our hotel in Nelspruit to take our to our Kruger National Park drives. They organized a taxi to pick us up at the airport in Cape Town and another to drop us off on the day we left. The combo tour of the Cape Point - Wine lands was also very nice. The driver - guide was very entertaining, informative and funny. The whole day was so much fun we didn't even realize the time had passed. Anything I wanted during the trip I contacted the travel agent and they were fast at resolving it. At one point in Cape Town there was a mix-up with our taxi fair at the airport pick-up, and I payed the driver though it was included in the honeymoon package we had pre-paid. I informed them when I realized it was a mistake and although it wasn't that much money they went into all the trouble of contacting the taxi company and managed to get them to refund me in cash on the day of our departure! That was amazing customer service! Overall it was a lifetime experience and my wife is already urging me to plan another trip to S.A. (three months later...!)

I went to South Africa last year in March and had the pleasure of touring with Umzantsi for 2 of my tours, the ferry river cruise and Elephant-backed safari, both very enjoyable! I would definitely recommend this tour company!

Thank you for your help and organization of the bus for my students to and from Tsitsikama. Everything really went very well. I will definitely be contacting you again early next year to arrange the transport for the next field trip!

Hallo Peter, wir hatten das Glück, Mitte September, mir Dir zusammen von Kapstadt(ab Winchester Mansions) bis Port Elisabeth zu reisen. Die drei Tage waren für uns ein unvergessliches Erlebnis. Die vielen fundierten Informationen, Tipps und Anregungen durch Dich sowie die vorher nicht eingeplanten Stopps und Abstecher haben uns sehr gut gefallen. Wir haben uns einfach wunderbar umsorgt gefühlt. Nach Möglichkeit werden wir versuchen, auch für unseren nächsten Südafrika-Aufenthalt, eine Tour mit Dir einzubauen. Vielen, vielen Dank und Grüße aus dem (jetzt saukalten) Deutschland. Andrea Konrad und Stefan Peter.

Hallo Peter u. Lyn, ...Ich wollte aber noch von der Reaktion unserer gemeinsamen Kunden berichten. Herr Piehler war Ende April bei mir im Büro. Er hatte sogar eine tragbaren DVD Player mitgebracht, um mir die Aufnahmen vom Haitauchen vorzuführen. Von der Reise selbst war er restlos begeistert. Ehrlicherweise hat er auch eingestanden, dass er diese Reise niemals zu diesem Preis bekommen hätte, wenn er ein vergleichbares Angebot aus einem Katalog eines unserer großen Anbieter TUI / Dertour / Meiers Weltreisen etc. gebucht hätte. Wir haben gemeinsam also alles perferkt organisiert.

Thank you so much! We tell everyone about the gorgeous scenery and how Peter knew how all the towns were settled and named and exactly where to stop to stay over night. It was truly an amazing experience. It is a good thing we had some excitement to come home to. Otherwise, it would have been really difficult to come back after such a great trip.

I have had the pleasure of taking two tours with Umzantsi Afrika Tours when I have visited South Africa from England. I employ a chauffeur myself and am a discerning client. The planning and choice of accommodation also the places visited have been excellent. The guide, Peter Haller, is attentive and polite and pays attention to detail. Being on a private tour has meant that we have seen more than the average tourist does and with a lot more comfort. I recommend him as a tour guide and Umzantsi Afrika Tours.

Just wanted to say thanks for your help with Safari, car reservation etc. The safari day was brilliant, loved every minute of it and so did my sister. Car hire worked out great too as they upgraded to a bigger car with no extra charge! The rest of the vacation went great, had a fabulous time everywhere and the weather was very good to us. It felt like we were away for a month. Anyway just wanted to drop you a line to say thanks for everything. Best of luck to you and Peter for 2007.