Soter Mutanbalike - Tanzania - keeps on changing name

We arrange in advance a safari with the company Sunbird managed by Soter Clement Mutambalike, since we trusted your list of reliable tour companies, but actually, according to our experience, this is not at all professional nor reliable.

What we had eventually was a very stressful safari, during which we had to discuss every single day in order to get what we paid for, we even  had to call the Italian and American (other customers were from USA) embassies in order to have what we agreed for. 

The embassy was indeed very helpful, but Soter Mutambalike is so an ignoble person that was even able to lie to the officers in a lot of occasions. Indeed, we had to call the embassy, not just once, but more than 6 times. Every step we did we encountered a problem and we had to discuss and ask for some help.

 We had also to ask the guardians of the parks to help us and wasted a lot of hours, which we were supposed to spend visiting the beautiful parks of that country.

1. We were supposed and paid for a safari of 6 days in a jeep with 4 people included us. Instead Soter Mutambalike forced us to do the safari in a jeep with other 5 tourists, that means 7 of us in a jeep. Therefore Soter Mutambalike saved a lot of money and we had to be squeezed in the jeep with ALL our luggages on the roof top (preventing the visibility of the animals during the safaris)  and partially inside the jeep. So we had to fight not only among ourselves to find a place but also among cumbersome luggages. Everywhere it is suggested to go for a safari in a jeep with not more than 5 people, so we guess we should not describe why we were disappointed of this first compromise the manager forced us to accept. Moreover we could have paid much less if we wanted to share the jeep with so many people!

2. Three of the people in our jeep had a safari of 3 days. It’s easy to understand that it’s impossible to combine a safari of 6 days with one of 3 days. We all wanted to see the three most beautiful parks Tarangire, Ngorongoro crater and Serengeti, which are not so close by, and since they are quite big the best is to spend a few days in each, but in order to combine the two groups, one of the them should have had to see less than what it payed for. 

3. We had to discuss every day of the safari with the guide and Soter Mutambalike (on the phone) in order to have what we payed for. Indeed that manager was trying to save money for any activity we were supposed to do. For instance he wanted us to spend 2 days in Lake Manyara and only one in Serengeti instead of 2 in Serengeti and one in lake Manyara, in order to pay less for the entrance, that were already included in our payment. He even told us that all the animals migrated from Serengeti to lake Manyara! This was considered funny by the guardians we met in Serengeti, and gave an idea on what kind of person Soter Mutambalike  is. His company should have never been included in the list of recommended tour operators of the Tanzania Association of Tour Operators (TATO http://www.tatotz.org/).

4. He did not give the money for our entrance and camping fees to the guide!!!! He did not top up the credit card of the guide and wanted us to lend him the money for what we had ALREADY paid for. We obviously refused, because we soon understood what kind of person we were dealing with and that we will never seen back that money, but, because of this “inconvenient” we spent a lot of hours at each entrance gate arguing in order to find a solution! 
Tanzania is a very contradictory country, so beautiful and so badly managed, with so many amazing places and so dreadful people.