Review: Mar Tours and Safaris (Local guide at Moshi)
Review: Mar Tours and Safaris (Local guide at Moshi)
TLDR: Phenomenal operation and logistics. Food, support personnel, guides and customer care were great! Highly recommend using them for your guide.
I summited Kili on January 23rd and I used Mar Tours for my guide company. I had read about them here on this subreddit and after some research, I decided to go with them. I picked the 7 day Lemosho route and It was approx. $1600. Here are some of the things I want to let you guys know.
Guides: They were super knowledgeable, communicative, and helpful. They made every effort to help us get to the summit including carrying my backpack on summit day. I got sick around Camp 3 and they stayed up with me all night to help me get better. Even one of the other staff who had no reason to take care of me stayed up with me, made me tea, helped me get back to the tent, and even tucked me in for the rest of the night. I felt truly cared for and safe among them.
Porters: Phenomenal guys! I had a porter assigned to carry my stuff. He had a great attitude and was overall a standup guy. On one of the days, the recovery drink powder I had in a sandwich bag burst and got all over my clothes and gear. It was made worse after it got a little wet from the rain and stuck to all my gear. He helped me clean all my gear and stayed with me until he was sure I was squared away. Even though I let him know it was not his fault and I can do it all myself, he was deeply apologetic and helped me regardless. The same could be said about other porters my other hiking partners had.
Cook: The food I ate was far better than the food I make myself at home. The diet we had were strategic in its portions. It was subsequently carb heavy the closer we got to the summit day. Each meal would start out with appetizers like soup, salads, fruits and then followed by main course. It felt like I was getting a 5 star service. Although I highly recommend sticking to a vegetarian diet during your ascent since most of the meat they carry are highly susceptible to being spoiled since they are unrefrigerated.
Support staff: All the other support staff they had on team (almost 15 people) were great people. I didn’t interact with them a whole lot but every interaction I had with them were positive. Couple of the guys also decided to assist us during the summit push. They bought with them ginger tea, snacks and more water during the summit push. We tipped these guys a bit extra as well.
Bottom line: Mar Tours is one of the many guide companies operating in Kili. In my research, Mar tours had the cheapest rate and far exceeded my expectations by light years. I (and I believe my fellow hikers) highly recommend them. Obviously, the more hikers in one trip, the cheaper it is. So, I highly recommend going to Kili as a group. Plus it’s a lot more fun that way (at least according to me)
My opinion on guide companies: I talked more to the guides to understand the business of such guide companies. From what I learned all the guides, porters, cooks and other staff are subcontracted by guide companies. They move around between companies depending on the availability of work. All the guides go through the same training (it seemed like my guide was best friends with other guides on the trail). Even the expensive guide companies had the same level of service down to the snacks people were getting (same juice box, cookies, candy, toilets, tents etc). So I highly recommend supporting a local business in Moshi unlike the international ones. You are basically paying the extra cost for those companies’ overhead and you more or less get the same service as the cheap ones. One exemption I noted was…a certain expensive guide company had a westerner fluent in English act as their “guide” while the local guide was doing the bulk of the work. Again, to be certified guide for Kili, local guides has to be fluent in English though it may not be as good as a westerner. I come from the US and I had no problem communicating with my guides.
Hope this information helps! Good luck on your climb and please feel free to ask me any questions about my experience, preparation, gear selection etc for climbing Kilimanjaro.
PS: I have added some pictures that I took. I am refraining from adding any pictures of people as I do not have their consent.
