Africa

[DangerousMouse]

Does anyone have any advice? I'm looking at our summer holiday next year, I'm thinking of an all inclusive resort in either Gambia or Tanzania, is anyone familiar with either of these? or have any other suggestions? We can't really afford a safari but somewhere near things to do and see would be good, like conservation projects or rescue places..

what appeals to you about these two places if you aren't going to be able to afford a safari? How will you travel around? self drive in some countries can be tricky but the alternatives expensive.

We thought about doing the garden route in south Africa with a short safari for a couple of days tagged on but decided after looking at the accuweather website that really it wasn't going to be great weather then and we would leave it until we could do a Christmas/winter visit.

We went to Kenya a few years ago. Got a really cheap (3 star hotel) all inclusive beach deal at Dianni beach.

While there we booked a 2 day safari (yes, i know we lost 2 days/1 nights that had already been paid for AI) and the whole thing worked out much cheaper than if we had booked a safari beforehand.

And it is luck of the draw what you see. Talking to people who had booked beforehand an gone on longer safari's and some of them had seen much less than we had.

You pay next to nothing really when you buy over there.

(#Disclaimer - we always go bargain basement with the hotel. As long as they have food, drink and a clean room what more do you need? And it gives us masses of spending money to do what we like while we are away)

Ok, thanks for the replies, the reason I'm looking at Africa without safari is that we've costed a safari to be £15,000. 4 of us, my daughter is classed as an adult. The AI in Africa is looking to be about £4000. I am attracted to Africa due to the cost, the climate, the flight time, the fact we can do an AI but have something else to do too, I haven't found all those things else where - we want to travel outside of Europe.
Not sure about how we'll travel around, I'm sure the hotel will be able to advise us, we would mainly stay in the hotel and beaches, some of the hotels have things like bird/vulture/reptile feeding stations which look cool.
We have also thought that we may be able to do some kind of day/2 day safari booked out there.
We would like a really nice hotel with once beach and pool as we would spend a lot of time there.