Why ANA?
Because we truly love Africa.
This is recognized not only by the suppliers with whom we work, including lodge owners, guides, and hoteliers, but most importantly, our clients, who appreciate having an experience that surpasses even their greatest expectations.
Our Commitment to Custom Design your Journey to Specification. The Anastasia’s Africa Difference…
Don’t Come to Us if you want a thick glossy brochure full of packaged, pre-scheduled trips.
Our mission is to provide travelers with the highest quality conservation-based safari experience while creating awareness for, and ensuring a positive impact on, sustainable and responsible tourism, conservation and community development initiatives.…
Your guides educate you about local conservation efforts, you’ll see how the local communities live side-by-side with Africa’s big game, and a portion of the cost of every safari directly supports management of wildlife conservation areas. But if you are looking for a more hands-on, in-depth conservation and cultural-immersion experiences, check out our Cultural & Conservation focused journeys
We know the seasons, the wildlife movements, the lodges & camps, and the people on the ground.
We know how to get you from point A to point B in the best logistical ways. We work with you to custom tailor a one-of-a-kind safari itinerary that is perfectly suited to your needs and desires, with all the logistics and nitty gritty details behind the scenes expertly organized so that your trip is seamless, leaving you to enjoy the wilderness you traveled so far to enjoy!
Anastasia’s Africa represents the Best of the Best: Creative, Personalized itineraries crafted by true Africa experts.
As a boutique company with low overhead, the company can also go head-to-head with any of the large, corporate African tour operators and beat them every time on price and originality. Anastasia’s Africa is a boutique tour operator with long established relationships and great knowledge of the continent.
This enables us to offer clients our expertise and keep the costs down, while using the client’s vision as our roadmap to create their dream safari.
How Do We Accomplish This?
Direct Relationships
We partner with an exceptional group of legendary safari guides, award winning environmentally harmonious lodges and small luxury hotels.
Significant Savings
We recognize that it is even more important that ever that you get superb value and quality. Through our direct relationships, clients enjoy significant savings on an intimate, insiders view of Africa coupled with the opportunity to have profound life-changing experience (and bundles of fun!) We do not produce thick glossy brochures and thus keep our overheads at a minimum, and do not need to pad our pricing.
Private Trips
You will not be put into a pre-formed group. Our custom, private itineraries allow you the intimacy of savoring extraordinary travel experiences with your partner, friends, family, or your special affinity group. We have traveled Africa and research extensively and the experiences and properties we recommend fit with our philosophy of using traditional safari camps, lodges, and bush homesteads that accommodate only a handful of guests and are in exclusive settings.
Unique Properties
The properties we work with have been hand-picked based on their itineraries, hospitality, and the overall authentic experience. Most are owned and operated by people devoted to preserving the wilderness and the culture of the local people. The lodges we choose are often located on private concessions and are as individual and eclectic as their owners.
Moving in Style
When possible and in your budget, we fly you from place to place so you can spend more time with wildlife, meeting local people, and seeing and doing what you came over to do, rather than time on endless roads. During your game viewing your land-rovers will be open topped most of the time, and we highly encourage alternate forms of transport which gets you closer to the wildlife including horseback and walking.
Research & Safari Design
The most obvious way to ensure we are sending our clients to the best pales for game, season, accommodation, hosting, and safari guides is to go there ourselves and see.. Anastasia and Karin and their team have over 100 years of experience creating life-changing journeys to Africa. At Anastasia’s Africa we stay up to date by traveling extensively to the places we send our clients to.
Experience
When you contact us, one of the secrets of our success is that your safari will be overseen by Karin Jones (our Managing Director) or Anastasia Mann (Our Founder) who has vast experience of Africa. Together with our team, they will personally design the journey with you, or together with you and your travel planner. After talking through your ideas and preferences, we will be in a position to create a safari that will encompass the very essence of your expectations. We will not ask for any commitment from you until you are happy with the result. This is the way we do things, because we depend on referrals and we have found that the best way to convince you of our value is to demonstrate it. Contact us even if you are in the initial stages of planning.
Impartiality
We are a privately owned independent company with no shareholding in any camp or lodge. We are free to design your itinerary using places we believe will suit you best.
The Custom Safari Planning Interview
When planning a client’s safari, we conduct an extensive safari planning interview to best understand a client’s dream trip with them personally or together with their travel planner, or in the case of a corporate incentive or non-profit institution alumni trip, their true mission. This includes a focus on their timing so as to pick the best destination at that time of year relating to details such as climate and migration pattern, as well as incorporation their travel style. We dedicate ourselves to providing safaris that first and foremost allow clients an insider’s view of Africa, as far away as possible from mass tourism, with up close wildlife viewing opportunities, but also journeys that incorporate activities encompassing client’s mission or special interests such as anthropology, culinary and wine, culture, soft adventure, family friendly activities or romance, by matching clients to the right properties, specialized guides, and experiences. The final piece relates to the financial investment in the trip – and here the goal is to take any budget and maximize it – always end the trip with a giant crescendo! This interview can take place around a kitchen table or a living room, at a travel planner’s office, by Zoom, conference call or email. Whatever works best for the client.
Objective advice
We will then propose and price a whole variety of options depending on your interest, your time of travel and your budget.
Safari planning & reservations
We will investigate different options with you. Check availability of lodges, camps, hotels and set up transfers and all activities for you. We then book everything for you. Coordinate the whole trip for you.
Operations coordination & backup
HOW TO WORK WITH US IN MORE DETAIL
Once everything is booked, the coordination does not stop. We put the whole thing together into an itinerary for you and begin to get you ready for your trip with articles and information on customs, packing tips, book lists, leading up to your departure with final documents. We provide back up for you while you’re on safari and check-in with you while you are traveling, taking care of any changes that may arise along the way.