About Our Company

Choosing the Right Company.

Choosing the right service provider for trekking and safaris in Africa can be an intimidating and exhausting research endeavor.  Our goal is simple; to provide the highest quality, personalized and competitively priced professional African adventure facilitation.  This page notes some of the most important things we recommend you consider when choosing a tour operator.

Value

It is very important to ensure you are not paying for services that are not practical.  In contrast, if you go with a package where the price seems too good to be true, it probably is, and you will end up paying for it in a lack of quality, safety, service, and comfort provided, and likely your porters will too.

Safety

Safety and risk mitigation have a lot to do with the service staff, including the staff to client ratio, staff experience and training, professionalism, and established policies of the tour provider.  Great Rift Mountains and Safaris does not sub-contract climbing services to other companies on the mountains and safaris, and only works with well known, trusted partners in Zanzibar.  Our Guides and Porters work directly for us.  When you book with us, you climb with us.  This assures consistency and quality of service from planning and booking stages right through to conduct of the climb and/or safari .  That consistency and accountability allows us to maintain high quality service control, through our staff training and policies with safety at the forefront.

Honesty and Transparency

We mentioned that when you book your trip with us you climb with us, which is true.  However, other services, such as lodging, domestic flights, diving and possibly some other services depending on your package, are arranged with other companies.  We don’t own hotels, airplanes, or boats.  This provides the benefit of you being able to choose from a variety of lodging options to fit your budget and desires.  It also makes things much less stressful for you to allow us to make arrangements like booking intra-African flights and other trip features which can be challenging and frustrating to book from abroad.  Our business is guided climbs, but we are happy to ‘take the pain away’ and book as much, or as little of the remainder of your trip as you wish.  With an intimate knowledge of the areas and partnerships with hotels and transport companies, we can make recommendations and arrangements for a safe and efficient vacation. We just really want you to enjoy your trip, feel safe, be stress free, and be happy with our service.

Ethics and Respect

This means the service provider has respect for your goals, safety, time, comfort and investment into adventure, but not at the expense of a lack of respect for the Guide and Porter Staff or the environment.  We take pride in treating our staff with dignity and with respect.  They work extremely hard in very harsh conditions to ensure that you achieve your goals safely and as comfortably as possible.  We also take pride in treating the environment and the mountains with respect.  We make every attempt at minimal impact climbing and camping and our goal is to always leave the environment we travel in cleaner than we found it.

 Achieving the highest standard and striking a fair balance between those priorities is our goal.

Great Rift Mountains and Safaris is a relatively small company, which allows us to provide personalized service without added expenses.  But the small size of our company is not indicative of our experience or quality.  On the contrary, it enables us to provide high quality, personalized and professional services for very efficient and competitive rates.  Our equipment is top-of-the-line, as is our staff!  We look forward to being part of your African adventures.

Colman Temba

Colman is not just the owner, but the heart and soul of Great Rift Mountains & Safaris.  These are his words:    

“My name is COLMAN TEMBA. I was born in December of 1979.  I attended school and started working as a porter on Kilimanjaro at the age of 15.  After graduating from secondary school in 2002, I received my license to guide clients on Kilimanjaro.  Some people ask me why I would climb while I was in school.  I did this because I needed money to pay for my school fees!  Education was very important to me.  Early in 2012, I had been guiding for 10 years, so I developed a plan to start my own company to organize trips on the mountains in Tanzania, safaris, and Zanzibar.  My dream was to create a company to support my local community by creating more jobs.  With the help of my great friend Chris, who assists me with marketing and client bookings, now I have the company that I dreamed of.

Sometimes people ask me ‘how many times have I been on top of Kili?’. To be honest, I have been there more than 350 times.  It’s my hope to be there more than 1000 times if I will be healthy.  And sometimes I am asked ‘why do I want to start my own company?’.   I think when you start with a client from the beginning, from planning the trip until the time to make the trip, right to the end, this is more professional and will be a successful trip, rather than to talk with someone who does not go to work with you on your trip.  I saw ways to provide better services to clients and I wanted to base a company with a focus on service quality.  In the words of the famous mountaineer REINHOLD MESSNER, he says that GOOD PREPARATION LEADS TO GOOD SUCCESS, and the good preparation is to talk with someone who knows the mountain as the back of his hand.

Finally, people ask about my favorite route on Kili.  To be honest I used to love MACHAME before, but now I am so interested with NORTH CIRCUIT.  I like it not just because of its beauty.  I like it because it’s good for acclimatization, which leads to success for my clients.

I also enjoy guiding on Mt Meru, and I started to also guide on Mt Oldoinyo Lengai and Mt. Loolmalasin.”

Colman’s skills as a guide, decision making on and off the mountains, his personality, humility, ethics and morals have shaped this great company.  And I know, if you are considering booking a trip, that the services Great Rift Mountains and Safaris provides under his leadership are unmatched.

Said Mfinanga

My name is Said Jafary Mfinanga. I am 32 years old. I’m a safari guide for about ten years now.  I was born a Moshi in Kilimanjaro region. I received my primary and secondary education here in Moshi in Kahe primary school and later in secondary school Majengo. After completing secondary education I joined a wildlife college called Professional Tour Guides and received my diploma in wildlife management, tour guiding, as well as Spanish language services.  After graduating, I had the opportunity to do training with several companies and then I had the opportunity to work in the Serengeti National Park for two years as a resident guide. This made me more interested in learning about wildlife education and a love of working in the park.  

I met Colman in 2017 and started working with him in his company as his Chief Safari Guide. He is a very good person and he gives me enough cooperation in working and I love working here.  

Many visitors have been asking me why I would like to work as a tourist guide?  

My answer is that as much as I would like to learn more about wildlife I would also like to teach many people to love animals based on their natural instincts.  

Many have been asking why I do not get tired of looking at animals every day for the whole period, but I tell you that every second for wildlife is different every day so it is not easy for me to get tired to learn more about wildlife, you have to spend more time.

Others they ask which park do I like the most?  

My answers always is I love all the parks in Tanzania but for the northern Tanzania national parks I like the Serengeti more because it is bigger and has a lot of animals, and if you have enough time you will be able to see a lot of animals here.  

Finally, I welcome you to Tanzania and welcome you to our company and we are ready to serve you well from the beginning to the end of your journey.

Chris Kopp

This picture is Colman and I on my last trip. We climbed Loolmalasin together, and I also met Said in person. I met Colman in 2009 when he was our guide on Kilimanjaro. Colman and I became good friends and we decided to start this business together. We both knew we could provide higher quality services with a focus on quality instead of quantity. We’re not one of the large operators on the mountain. And because we’re not, we have better flexibility for customization, privacy, and the personal touch.

Colman is the company. He’s been guiding in Tanzania since he was a youngster. He’s humble, personable, competent, intelligent, and just a really good guy. My job is to advertise and book. It’s to answer your questions and ask all the right questions to make sure your trip is exactly what you want. My background is military, business, and travel, and my goal with GRMS is to get the word out about Colman so he can grow his business successfully. Once you meet him, you will realize why it was the right decision to let Colman guide your African adventure!