Anyone experienced?

Don't know of one in Charleston, but we dealt with fisheagle in texas. Some of the travel agents even deal with specific countries also. But you are correct, you do need an experienced Africa Travel Agent.

What seat of the pants, plan your trip as you land in the plane is not the way to go????

There is one travel agent here in Columbus, O that does S.A stuff and Safari stuff I can not remember her name for the life of me but she is up in the Dublin, Ohio area.

Kevin--don't think seat of the pants is the way to go for Africa.. <img src="/forums/images/graemlins/Smile.gif" alt="" /> Too much could go wrong..

Seriously, Bert at Fish Eagle Safaris did a great job for us. Check him out!!!

It also depends on where you want to go and what you want to see. Some of the camps are only accessible via cesna. Some only have room for like 12 guest. So trying to arrange that on the fly and after you get there really would not work. Several of the camps we were at were fully booked out on several days, just the coordination of the Cesna flights was a job I imagine.

Now it might be easier to do that if you stayed just in the country of S. Africa, but even some of those camps are not easy to get last minute reservations into, and it is a BIG country to try to drive across! <img src="/forums/images/graemlins/Laugh.gif" alt="" />

Try this link. http://www.concierge.com/cntraveler...2005/08aug/travelspecialists.xml/?page=1

Every year Conde Nast Travel magazine comes out with a list of the best travel agents by speciality and destination. It just came out for this year.

Hope this helps.

Interesting link. I had not heard of any of those folks, except for Premier Tours, which is who we booked our air for Africa, as they are a consolidator. We were able to get our $300 cheaper through them than we could have booked it on our own.