A friend in the industry recently was recalling an incident when her phone was stolen from her hand in Dar-Es-Salaam, the capital city of Tanzania. Things happen even at home but become cumbersome when it is not on your own turf.

When clients head to Safari, we always recommend getting travel insurance.  We took our own advise and purchased our travel insurance from our provider Travel Guard.

Some of the reasons why our clients have been glad they had travel insurance.

• Jann F was scheduled to leave in two days when she had an emergency appendix operation. The recovery was going to take a week and if they did end up going to Tanzania [accounting the international flight penalty and fare change], they would have missed most of the Safari with their friends.  Luckily, they had travel insurance with Travel Guard and her and Bernie, her last husband, managed to enjoy the same Safari the following year with some other friends.
• US ambassador Thomas Pickering was all set to head on Safari when his daughter broke her arm right before her Safari. She could not join them  and had to cancel her Safari. Refund was provided by Travel Guard.
• You can not climb Mt. Kilimanjaro with a broken leg. Our client Debbie G was in Amsterdam ready to board her flight to Kilimanjaro Airport when she fell in at Schipol airport and broke her leg.  She was devastated she could not join her friends for the climb. She had to fly back to the US.  Travel Guard reimbursed the extra cost of the flight from Amsterdam to US and refunded her Safari.

These occurrence are not common – thankfully – but they did and do happen. Losing the Safari + international flight money would have added more injury to the already hurt wound.

And then there are those clients that don’t let a cast stop them from enjoying a ‘limping’ Safari. Darrell and Drew Howton enjoyed their 2nd Safari with Journey To Africa in Katavi and Mahale + Lake Natron and Southern Serengeti with professional guide Paul Oliver.

A broken leg did not stop Darrell from enjoying Katavi