We did the 5 day group safari and chose the lodge option.
Accommodation: all the lodges we stayed in were lovely, particularly the suricata boma lodge. They all exceeded my expectations in every way.
Food: our chef, Salima, kept us well fed each day with some of the most delicious food. There was always plenty to go around and enough for seconds most days. The dinners in the lodges were also fantastic.
Locations: over the 5 days we visited Tarangire, Lake Manyara, Serengeti, and Ngorongoro crater. Each park provided something new in terms of wildlife and landscape - Ngorongoro is particularly stunning! We kept our expectations low as to what animals we might see and came away extremely satisfied, having seen all we could have asked for and more.
Guide: I don’t know how to put into words how great our guide, Damian, is. We had the absolute best time with him over the 5 days. He is so knowledgeable about the wildlife, was amazing at getting us to prime vantage points for taking good pics, especially when there were dozens of other 4x4s at the same spot, kept us laughing the whole time and overall just made our trip extra special.
The only negative aspect to the whole trip was the lack of communication after paying the deposit. It was radio silence until I emailed the day before my flight to Tanzania to enquire about the airport transfer (no request for our flight info/arrival times was received, despite transfers being included in the package). After reaching out I received email confirmation that someone would meet us at the airport and then once we arrived, no transfer had been arranged. Thankfully Ally sorted something out for us pretty quickly and we weren’t left waiting. Our hotel had been switched from what was noted on the invoice and this was never communicated to us. We also had no idea of the itinerary or the fact there would be a briefing the evening before so some more information around these things in advance of arrival to Arusha would be good.
Overall it was an absolutely unforgettable experience, that I would happily repeat over and over again. I would highly recommend Suricata to anyone looking for a safari trip of a lifetime!