I have just returned from Africa, narrowly dodging coronavirus restrictions. Now, back home, it’s my turn to analyse the game, pass on the photos and thank MOWANA for this incredible experience of discovering the wildest side of Africa that they have organised for me.
I usually spend my summer holidays travelling for several weeks. Whenever I can, I try to hop between neighbouring countries, with no specific plan other than to get to know the places I visit in the most genuine way. This time I refused to make my trip dependent on recommendations I had read in a blog. Africa has 54 countries and I needed help from a professional to tell me where to go without wasting my holiday time.
It was my first time in Africa and I wanted to get away from “canned travel”. Those that thousands of people have done before you, where you are given a pamphlet that has been the same for ten years and you end up wasting time queuing at the places that are supposed to be the most emblematic because you don’t have the option to plan your own itinerary.
I entrusted my trip to MOWANA on the recommendation of a family member. Verena, from the very beginning, took an interest in my preferences in order to present me with the approach we could give to my trip. She sent me a personalised, ad hoc dossier, exclusively for me. What would be my tailor-made safari in Spanish. With the lodges where I would stay, with the itinerary and all the necessary information to enjoy the continent and come back satisfied.
Let’s be clear, travelling to Africa does not cost the same as going to La Manga, with all due respect to the region where I have been spending my summer holidays for more than 20 years. Except for a privileged few, it’s a trip you make once or twice in your life. Is it really worth skimping on expenses that will appear once you’re there?
For some time, I organised my trips by myself. I was a student and every euro I managed to save was a triumph that I celebrated in front of my friends. Unfortunately, the reality is different. What I had saved a few hundred euros by doing without a specialised agency, brought with it other contingencies that I hadn’t thought about in front of the computer: endless stopovers, bad connections, filthy hotels, taxes that I hadn’t counted on… Low-cost trips don’t usually work out well. After the last trip like this, I promised myself that it would be the last one. I spent a week looking at my bank statement repeating like a mantra the popular phrase “cheap is always expensive”. Translated with www.DeepL.com/Translator (free version)
Why is it that when we travel, we only worry about finding the best bargains on plane tickets or similar situations, instead of putting ourselves in the hands of specialists in travel organisation? Like me, you must have come across a group of Spaniards who were just as, if not more, lost than you, trying to find that place they had seen on Instagram. In short, wasting your time, which is worth as much or more than the money you saved.
I insist,THANK YOU in capital letters to MOWANA, for organising my trip to Botswana (because of Covid, Namibia and Zimbabwe are still pending), for your reasonable price, but above all, for your attention. It is a pleasure to discover people who are passionate about their work and who do it with excellence.
A 10/10 for one of the trips that will undoubtedly be part of the best of my life!
José Nieto
March 2020
