Safety on safari

Our safety conscious approach

Africa is unlike the more conventional destinations that many of us normally choose when we go on holiday.

It is a truly wild continent and the potential pitfalls for the inexperienced and unsuspecting traveller are huge. There are a multitude of issues that an independent traveller has to address before undertaking any journey in Africa.

The temptation to try and organise your own self drive safari can result in some very serious consequences, accidents and breakdowns in remote places with no back-up, totally insufficient insurance coverage, perilously ill-judged journey times and route-planning to name but a few.

With Safari Drive, we steer you around these pitfalls and we ensure that the (often excessive) red tape is taken out of your hands, leaving you free to enjoy a wonderful adventure.

You can rest assured that Safari Drives experienced team is here to advise and inform you on the very best possibilities for a seriously memorable trip, while keeping your safety at the forefront of everything we do.

Your safety is paramount

Independence and freedom to explore are vital ingredients of your safari but so is your safety. Self driving means you will be taking responsibility for certain aspects of your own safety and you must, therefore, be prepared in advance.

• Correct choice of routes to suit your experience
• Preparation, briefing and driving experience before you depart
• Propper safety equipment such as satellite telephones as standard with no extra charges for calling us
• The best vehicles and equipment to cope with the conditions
• We provide you with a detailed trip handbook
• You will receive a full in-country briefing on local conditions
• We provide you with air ambulance cover by local medical air rescue teams
• We check on your progress throughout your journey via regular contact with our teams in each country and with lodge owners and managers
• Satellite navigation to help route finding

You can rely on us for maximum support

In the event of a breakdown, we provide you with a replacement vehicle within as short a time as possible. In the unlikely event of a more serious situation, we react quickly and efficiently, formulating solid contingency plans and providing you with maximum possible support.

• On arrival
  When you touch down in your chosen country one of our team will come and meet you at your lodge. They will take you to your vehicle and give you a full and detailed safety briefing about your trip. This is important for you both to get an understanding of the dangers and difficulties along the way but also a great chance to have your questions answered. Our team are hugely knowledgeable on both the vehicles and the countries you will be driving in, so it is a great idea to get any final queries answered before you set off

• During your adventure
  As you move from camp to camp and lodge to lodge our team on the ground will always be on the end of the phone should there be a problem. As many of the camps and lodges our prebooked we can keep track of your movements discreetly without having to disturb your privacy or adventure but it does mean that if you are late in arriving to a particular lodge we will be alerted of your late arrival and strive to make contact and check everything is OK.

• 24 hour assistance.
  Prior to your trip you will be given your Trip Book, amongst other things this will have your emergency contact numbers. In the event of an emergency you will have numbers for all of our bases both UK and African including emergency mobile phone numbers of our representatives. You will also have a 24 hour emergency number for a member of our staff back here in the Uk. Should assistance be required our teams on the ground will strive to resolve the problem as quickly and efficiently as possible, in extreme cases quickly mobilizing emergency response services to the required locations.

• Satellite phones
  As part of our commitment to your safety and to give you complete self-assurance, we provide you as standard with a satellite phone, which we include free of charge as part of our service. With global network coverage a sat phone is the ultimate backup when in the bush. All calls to Safari Drive or our bases are completely free of charge.
  
• If you wish to make private calls we charge £1 per minute for the use of the Sat Phone. This is actually cheaper that the mobile international roaming fees from the major UK based service providers. e.g:
• Namibia - Uk costs
  Orange £1.75 p/min
  Vodaphone £1.69 p/min
  Tmobile £1.50 p/min
  O2 £1.70 p/min
• Easy texts to keep you in touch
  Our satellite phone system is equipped with a texting feature whereby your family and friends can send you texts to your satellite phone while you are away. Its very straightforward, you just give your satellite phone number to anyone you want to be able to contact you. They then come onto this website and click on the "text a Sat phone' button on the home page, enter your number, type their message and press send.

We use Iridium as our satellite network. The below image shows the global coverage of their satellites. Now covering all four corners of the globe.