Magic Africa

It has been slightly more than one year since we have completed our honeymoon in Uganda and Kenya, both of which were arranged through Kimkim. Reason I am this late to post this review is because I promised myself I will never look back and remember all the negative aspects of our honeymoon - however, Kimkim kept spamming me with e-mails, and here we are. Luckily, my wife and I both have taken good notes of these incidents, have screen recordings, videos etc. if anyone is interested... We spent majority of our time in Uganda and this is going to be all about Uganda.

Here we go:
1- You should know that Kimkim outsources its clients' queries onto so-called 'local expert's. What's worse is these 'local expert's than in turn outsource it again to someone local. As an example, when we contacted Kimkim, we were introduced to a 'local expert' called Vivian Kironde (Magic Africa), who was in fact living in Germany, and who had outsourced our trip to another agency in Uganda, and who had in turn hired our guide, Gideon. I do not think anywhere on this web-site you can clearly see this through, though I'm pretty sure they make you sign some disclosures which actually tells the customers that they will outsource everything. In short, these guys have zero accountability / responsibility, which I will tell you more later on.
2- On the original itinerary we were provided with, there were 15-hour travel distances by car & by plane, including a flight at 3AM (which included travel to and from the airport of another 4-5 hours each). Instead of Vivian, we found our own flights and actually did all of the connections ourselves. This all had to happen 2 weeks prior to our trip because of Vivian's incompetence.
3- 2 days prior to the trip, we were asked to pay an extra $820 without any explanations. This was originally asked by Vivian, once again, two days prior to the trip. We had paid our money weeks / if not months before. Imagine paying a huge amount of money, only to be asked for more, and when you ask where does it stop, Olivia from Kimkim tells you these are 'legit' expenses but they will 'gift' it to us
4- We had agreed to an all inclusive 'full board food' with Vivian and Kimkim. However, on the first day of our trip, our guide Gideon told us that this was not the case, instructed by Vivian... I cannot explain the level of 'he said she said' on this trip, and especially with the amount of money we had paid
5- During the trip, when we wanted to change the itinerary for an extra day of stay somewhere, we were quoted $170 / per night, instead of $145 that was communicated originally for that extra night on the Kimkim platform... Luckily, we had written proof, similar to our 'full board food'.

If you have read this far - please read the below as it gets better:
- We were supposed to stay for 3 nights in our final hotel in Bwindi National Park and on our last day, leave for the airstrip at 3AM. However, our guide told us that we should leave and go to a different hotel on our 2nd day, given the roads were very dangerous because of rains and heavy landslide. When we asked if Vivian / Kimkim was in the loop, he said, yes they are
- On our second day, we left to go to a different hotel in Bwindi, closer to our airstrip. After we have left and we moved closer to our destination, our guide told us that we were actually going to stay in a 'homestay' with a 'private butler' etc. We were slightly suspicious, but given we had moved from the original hotel already, had no connection / wifi etc., and was instructed that Kimkim was in the loop, we obliged thinking this should be okay. When we arrived to this 'homestay', it was shocking. The place where we were asked to stay had no doors. I do not want to go into more details out of respect for the lovely people who had opened up their home for us - but clearly something was wrong given we had paid tens of thousands for this trip.
- We then pressured our guide to find us a different hotel and he took us to 2-3 other hotels, which were similar to the homestay, and not at all in line with the hotels we so far stayed in Uganda. Finally, we charged our batteries in one of the hotels we were taken by our guide, and was just searching online, trying to find a connection to contact Kimkim
- We had to find our own accommodation (Engagi Lodge), without any help from Kimkim or Vivian (MagicAfrika), or our guide who was trying to put us through different terrible hotels. We were then promised by each of Kimkim, Vivian, and our guide that somebody other than us would be paying for our alternative accommodation, which in the end was denied by all parties. I'm not at all surprised by the guide or Vivian, but mostly by Kimkim. One word, disgusting behavior from everyone involved. They did not even take our calls and closed all channels of communication. I even tried to contact the founder on Linkedin, after all hopes were gone, and he blocked me...
- We were so lucky to have some of the best people in Engagi Lodge, who had heard our guide Gideon promise us that Kimkim / Vivian / Gideon would take care of our stay. When Gideon turned on his promise, the lovely people of Engagi Lodge told us that they will impound Gideon's car until they get their money from either one of Gideon / Vivian or Kimkim.

To recap - my wife and I paid c.$20k for this trip. A quick calculation back in the day would give us c. $8k for the same trip, if we had done it on our own. We knew that we had overpaid, but we were okay with it, given Uganda is a relatively hard to navigate country and we needed accountability from Kimkim and local expertise from Vivian. However, none of this mattered.

It was extremely stressful and unsafe at certain points in time, with zero accountability from Kimkim.

Do not ever use them. I am more than happy to speak to anyone (just a concerned citizen) - feel free to email.

Thanks,
Oncu
[email protected]

Gideon, our guide was great, and provided excellent service, and should have been consulted when Vivian was developing our itinerary. The micro-lodges Vivian booked us into were not necessarily the best choices for us, and we suspect a conflict of interest. The Budda Guest House in particular was well out of the way, causing extra travel time.
We will write more about this

My wife and I recently returned from our bucket list trip to Tanzania in East Africa on Saturday July 23rd. What an amazing experience. We want to thank Magic Africa and Vivian Kironde for helping to coordinate, schedule, recommend and provide us with an unforgettable trip to the cradle of life. Vivian was very patient with us and listened to our needs. Our experience from the moment we arrived to all the lodges/accommodations/food/people/places were picture perfect but the most important and highlight of our trip was our local guide and driver Johnson Mapimma. Johnson was not only personable, friendly, and accommodating but he had a wealth of knowledge and shared that knowledge with us. He taught us about the local wildlife during the safaris; where to find them, why they do certain things, how humans should respect them and more importantly, he taught us about the culture, it’s people and history. Because of Johnsons knowledge, know how and quick thinking he provided us with an opportunity to experience a rare catch of a lioness taking down a zebra along with her pride. Asante Sana Johnson for showing us your beautiful country and for being a friend.

Best,
Marcello &Anita
Kew Gardens, NY
USA

We just returned from an amazing trip to Uganda. Vivian was a true pleasure to work with. She is super responsive and planned us a first-class trip with one week notice. She arranged for the best guide ever in Hamid, who stopped us up at the airport and showed us all over his country for 12 days. We saw the rare African shoebill, chimpanzees in Kibale, lions and elephant in QE park, rare golden monkeys in MGhahinga--each a special trek or exploration. We stayed in beautiful lodges, especially the Volcanoes Kyambura Lodge. Vivian thought of everything and planned a logical and effective loop to end with an epic trek with a four-hour habituation permit to see mountain gorilla in Bwindi. It was a trip we will never forget, nor will will ever forget our new friend Hamid.