Please don't pay 100% before services. Keep part for after travelling. Thank goodness we did. All the agencies and guides failed somewhere.
Sora Tours's 4x4 Toyota needed pieces (Nissan has more nationwide) and we lost a day and a flight. Ask the agency for another car the moment it fails, don't wait for the car to break down.
Ginbie Abebe sent another guide instead of going himself with us to Simien, and this man made us repeat the same journey back a very transited road instead of taking other available rural paths.
Another guide cancelled the day to climb Dashen.
WorldSunEthiopia stranded us half a day in Aftera playing billiard and drinking coffee instead of seeing some other part of Danakil.
Please don't pay services not rendered. It is the way to cut their breaches of contract, or at least don't let them go free.
Yes, i completely agree to that post. Obviously it is more likely than not that something goes wrong on your tour. However, most of the guides and agencies insist on full prepayment.
We had a very bad experience with an omo valley tour. From the beginning, everything went wrong and so we spent lots of time waiting for our guide to organize the trip instead of visiting villages or interesting places. One day we also were left alone for the afternoon while our guide and our driver went somewhere else to do somethinge else - we don't know why and what. Accomodation often was much worse than the booked category. We had to change cars several times and we had to use tuktuks, because the car was broke down. On our last day, we had nearly no service because our guide could not organize the trip. Finally, we had to rent (and pay) a car ourselves to reach our final destination, because there was no car available and our guide couldn't organize one.
Luckily we had one day, which was really good, but above all we feel we had a rather poor experience compared to the price we paid.
Anyhow, i don't know how to avoid that. Our guide and tour company were best rated, but obviously , when it comes to problems, hey are not able to handle them.
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