In June, 2019 I sent emails to eight different Mombasa safari tour companies. Not only was Faith Chebet of Kenya Tru Nomads Tours the first to respond, her email answered the three basic questions in my initial email. Several of the other tour operators never responded and the others responded with basically a generic email that required me to then send them another one with my same basic questions.
After I finally received pricing information from the other ones, and Faith sent that to me right away, I was able to compare. I liked how complete and detailed Faith’s quotes were (and she also helped me narrow down which park made the most sense given our constrained time frame), and decided to book our overnight safari with Kenya Tru Nomads for when our cruise ship was going to be docked for two days in Mombasa in November, 2020.
Via CruiseCritic I ended up getting 25 other cruise passengers that were interested in doing the overnight safari. Faith communicated very efficiently and quickly with me and we all paid our minimal deposit via PesaPal (Africa’s version of PayPal, I think). I continued to email Faith because passengers would come up with different questions that they needed answered. Faith always responded quickly and thoroughly.
Fast forward to March and April, 2020 and many passengers decided to cancel the cruise because of the coronavirus concerns. I was sending Faith many cancellation emails and I was hearing back from the passengers that they were getting their deposits refunded within a week.
Finally, in mid-May, 2020 the cruise was canceled because of COVID-19 and the rest of us had to request our deposits be refunded. Once again, all of them were refunded to us, without issues or hassle, within one week.
I am so sad that I will not be able to go on the safari in Mombasa. If the safari itself was anything like Faith‘s communication skills and thoroughness, we are going to miss a wonderful tour. So, I can’t actually review the tour, but as someone who has put many small group tours together for cruise ship passengers, Faith was a pleasure to work with and the most professional tour company person I ever dealt with. I am very sorry that I will not get to actually meet her or Kenya Tru Nomads employees in November and I am praying that the people and economy of Mombasa are able to withstand COVID-19.